A WalkOn Part in the War
by Eatsscissors
Summary: COMPLETE.  A conscience is a hard thing to get rid of.  AlexMichael, MichaelSara, LincolnJane.
1. Chapter 1

TITLE: A Walk-On Part in the War

RATING: R

PAIRINGS: Michael/Alex, Michael/Sara, Lincoln/Jane

SPOILERS: It goes AU immediately after 'Rendezvous', but select elements from the rest of the season wound up finding their way into the work, great, sprawling thing that it grew into.

SUMMARY: A conscience is a hard thing to get rid of.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This fic started as an entry for Foxxcub's DrunkFic project, and the hysterical thing is, it was supposed to be light, fun caper porn. Then the writers went and decided that Alex wasn't complicated enough with a drug addiction and an undiscovered murder, and off we go! Suddenly, I'm writing an S2 AU.

---

Before Shales, Alex had never felt claustrophobia before in his life. There had been one closet in particular that his old man had been fond of, before Alex had gotten first large enough and then determined enough to fight back, draw blood, and win. There were first cramped military bunkers and then cramped stakeouts after that, during which he would stay so still for so long that he didn't only forget how to move, he forgot how to I want /I to move. Alex adapted to his physical surroundings in whatever way was necessary to do his job, and he was proud of that. He was also proud of the attention that it began to attract from his superiors, all of whom praised him for his cool, steady competence in conditions where virtually every other soldier or agent would begin to make the small mistakes that snowballed to become cataclysmic. Alex shaped his body until it was suited to meet any conditions that he required of it and shaped his character, too, going from the headstrong kid who would pick a fight even when he knew that he could not win into a man who could watch and wait and knew how to find his way towards the right, just course of action through thought rather than blind, passionate impulse. His superiors noticed and praised this change, also, and Alex was again made proud. More to the point, he thought that he would still feel proud even if there was no one around to notice at all. He was well-used by the time that he reached the age of majority to forcing both his body and his mind through tight spaces and hard fits, through crucibles designed for reaching towards better. Without it, he never would have been able to become the man who could, nearly three decades later, throw all of it away.

Before Shales and before the Company had come around to his door and made their careful, precise threats, he had been secure in his ability to emerge truer, stronger, _better_ on the other side of any struggle that was placed before him. Immediately after Shales, Alex began to wonder if he could still even breathe.

The same thing was happening to him now, and it had nothing to do with the propane that was filling the room. The thick, heavy feeling had started to evaporate from the air soon after Scofield had smashed the window so that he would not suffocate. Scofield had looked much younger and much more defiant as he had done that than was his usual wont. Alex had almost expected him to stick out his tongue afterwards and say, "So there." As if Alex had not already known that Scofield abhorred violence, and had known it from the moment in the elevator days before when Scofield had had a perfect opportunity to fire upon him and had not taken it. There were be no surprises coming from that corner, only the depressing certainty that there was only one way for this to end.

It was purely psychological, this tightness in Alex's chest, even though it was worse even than the headaches that would rip through him when he went too long between one pill and the next. It was made of walls that were not there and at the same time were much tighter and stronger than the chain link which surrounded him. It had come and gone ever since he had first lost control, since he had slipped away from the man that he had forged himself into and back into the stubborn, violent, _stupid_ kid that he had been, when he had pulled the trigger on Shales. This time, however, the beating of ghost wings belonged to more than one person.

Alex made a snarling sound that he scarcely recognized as himself and that might have worried him if he had not already felt his true identity slipping away from himself for months now. He resumed his pacing. A humiliating phone call had already been placed to Agent Kim, detailing how Alex's attempt to break ranks and complete his mission once and for all had come to a dismal failure. Kim had assured him that help would arrive whenever the Company could spare it, which meant that it would be there whenever Kim was good and sure that Alex had learned his lesson and would not be disobeying orders again. Perhaps a few hours or days after that to ensure that the lesson had truly had time to sink in. Alex was half tempted-more than half- to simply raise his gun, point it at the lock that was keeping him imprisoned, and fire. Maybe there was still enough propane in the air to turn a spark into an inferno. Maybe there was not. He had no way of knowing until he found out. And if he was right in what he really thought would happen, that Scofield did not leave things to chance and there was still more than enough propane in the air to explode himself and half of the factory as well, then it would be done. There would be nothing left for the Company to twist its hooks into, as even in his most wildly optimistic moments he could not bring himself to believe that they would release him voluntarily.

It was a thought that was still appealing enough to make Alex put his finger against the trigger in a gesture that was nearly a caress and would have set all of his internal alarms to ringing if he had been in his right mind. Alex was not a stupid man, of that much he knew very well, and he also knew that he was not one of those rare few who seemed to understand everything in the universe save for themselves. He did not believe that he had been in his right mind for some time. When weighed against the final analysis and most likely outcome of his entire mess, he could not say that the thoughts were as unappealing as they ought to have been. The Company would be deprived of their weapon. Scofield and his brother, should the latter truly turn out to be innocent, would still be alive to give the Company something to worry about as they laid awake at nights and wondered what else the brothers knew. That was the worst-case scenario. In the best, Scofield might even develop a streak of civic duty to match his impressive ones for self-preservation and take them all down. Even in his animalistic pacing, Alex could feel the corners of his mouth turning up and into something that desperately wanted to be a smile as he contemplated that possibility.

Pam would be hurt when she received the news of his death, and angry. Alex could not quite bring himself to believe that she would be devastated, not after all the terrible words and incomprehensible actions that he had hurled at her over the past year, but neither in his darkest moments could he bring himself to believe that she would be truly unmoved. She would be hurt that he had not warned her in the same way that she had been hurt when the man that she had married had done an about-face into a violent, moody stranger. She would bet that line between her eyes that Alex always joked could precede the throwing down of lightning bolts from heaven. Pam would storm and rage and cry, would change her mind about going to the funeral a half-dozen different times before she would go in the end by telling herself that she was doing it for Cameron. She would kneel down in front of their son and tell him that his Daddy had been very sad for a very long time, a different and more dangerous kind of sad from what she and Cameron were feeling right then, and that was why he had gone away in the first place. Alex had no idea what Cameron thought of him, as he had seen the boy rarely since he had thrown Pam out of the house and informed her that he did not intend to fight for custody, and he hardly been a father in the weeks and months before that. Whatever Cameron thought or felt, Pam would take care of it because that was what she did. She would hold the two of them together with the force of her indefatigable will until they had all healed and moved on.

Until one day, when a man or perhaps a pair of men wearing nicely tailored suits would arrive on her front doorstep. Alex paused. Pam would let them in, of course, after politely inquiring to see the identification that they would be happy to provide. Her ex-husband had accustomed her to men in suits arriving at all hours of the day and night. Pam would ask them if she could offer them anything to eat or drink, they would decline in tones that were the very definition of etiquette, and then, after a few more polite questions, they would put a bullet into her head and carry her body out in pieces. Transport was made much easier that way, and the chances of the neighbors noticing anything amiss were less. Probably they would kill Cameron, as well. You never knew what Dear Old Dad might have let slip to the little tyke during a game of catch in the front yard, and there was nothing that a jury liked more than an earnest young witness. He was still so small that they would probably not need to dismember him. That was the thing about the Company's brutality: they kept it civilized. They committed no more atrocities than were needed to further their final goal, whatever it was, as Alex was being kept on the very shortest of need to know leashes and could not say. They did not understand that this almost made them worse.

Alex realized that he had begun to pant, though his prison was no hotter now than it had been a few moments before and the air was becoming sweeter by the moment. A cold prickle of sweat had broken out along his shoulders and down the line of his spine. He resumed his pacing. This time, Alex kept his finger as far away from the trigger as he could possibly manage. That was unacceptable. He would not allow that anyone other than himself should pay for his mistakes or find themselves dirtied by his mess. He had no choice, then. (And damn the voice of Pam in his head telling him that there were always choices, some of them just more difficult than others.)

There was a second voice in Alex's head as well, slyer and more subtle, terrifying because it rang with rationality. It said that the same logic applied to Pam and Cameron even if Alex spent the rest of his life doing exactly what the Company wanted, descending to an even blacker level of hell each time. He would always have to wonder when some bright young agent would finally decide that no one could keep a secret for that long and it would be more cost-efficient to take out the entire Mahone clan at a go. That voice tended to sound like Pam, too.

His incessant pacing to and fro was making him feel less like a man, not more. Alex spun and lashed out violently at the gate with his foot before he could halt himself. He had thrown his full weight against it earlier, when Scofield had still been there and so frustratingly close. Alex did not actually expect that this fit of pique would be any more successful than the last one.

The deep, angry creaking sound that emerged from the lock was new.

Alex paused and stared hard at the door. He exhaled a breath that might have been a laugh or even a sigh as he realized that the solution might really be just that simple. It was almost enough to make him take up religion again.

Alex set his gun carefully to the side so that he would not (accidentally) do anything stupid with it and wiped his palms off against his slacks. The tightness in his chest was almost entirely gone. Alex preferred to think of this as a result of the clean, fresh air that was blowing in through the window that Scofield had so helpfully broken for him. Certainly the other reasons that he had for being unable to breathe had not abated.

The lock made another one of those satisfying sounds of protest as Alex reared back and struck at it again. Scofield probably would not have worn that look of mingled smugness that quickly became frustration when he could not woo Alex over to his side if he had known that his prison was not as secure as all that.

Alex exhaled a long stream of air through his nose and kicked at the lock for the third time, harder than he had even thought himself capable. His leg was beginning to ache, but the way that the door was starting to rattle back and forth in its hinges was encouraging.

'Any ideas?' Alex asked the voice that sounded like Pam as he continued to slam at the door. She had nothing to offer.

---

Sara did not panic. This was the personality trait that she had been praised for over and over again, starting when she was an undergraduate and extending all the way into medical school. 'Sara knows how to keep her head.' 'Sara knows how to work under pressure.' 'A bomb could go off next to Sara and she would still keep doing her job.'

Sara had been mildly to moderately high when all of these events had taken place, so after a decade and on the other side of sobriety she didn't think that they really counted. She thought that she could work herself up to a pretty good head of panic right now, if she wanted.

Lance's gun was the biggest thing in the entire world. Somehow, as Sara watched, it had swollen until it was larger than her head, then larger than her entire car, big enough to eat her up at a single gulp. She hardly heard his gentle greeting of "Hello, Sara," as if they were old friends who happened to be meeting again after a separation of months or years, through the roaring in her ears.

She was not panicking, however. Much as Sara thought that going into full-fledged hysterics would be the best thing in the world right then and that if anyone had an excuse to do it, it was she, outside of the roaring her mind was clear and sharp. Maybe you could only have your life menaced so many times before it became just another day of the week.

"Lance, what you are you doing?" Sara asked, though it was difficult. She was breathless from the adrenaline.

Lance winced for a second, as if something that she had said had bothered him. The movement was so slight that Sara would not have caught it at all if she had not become accustomed to reading the emotions of Michael's unmoving face. She wondered what had set it off. Surely not her question-they both knew exactly what he was doing, and they both knew that her question for exactly what it was, the kind of silly and meaningless thing that people automatically blurted out when their brains refused to process what was in front of them.

It must have been his name, then. Sara realized with a sick lurch that it very likely was not his name at all. The idea of his man being pained by the fact that he had had to lie to her about his name while he was holding a gun on her, presumably completely ready to kill her if she did not do as he ordered, was suddenly so absurd that it was all that Sara could do not to break into a fit of giggles. She wondered if there was a different place, beyond panic but equally dangerous, that could explain why she was so calm now.

"I'm taking you somewhere where you and I can talk," Lance said in response to her question. His tone was level and polite in spite of tension that Sara could not help but hear. She was not sure if it was the gun that was making that tone so ridiculous, or if it was the tone that was doing the same to the gun. Maybe it was purely the fact that she was so scared.

"Could have just asked me out for a cup of coffee," Sara replied in a reasonable tone that sounded nothing like her while her eyes darted up and down the street for help from any quarter. It was broad daylight and while her motel might fall down on the fleabag side of things, it was the single point of blight in what looked to be an otherwise well-kept district. Suited men should not be able to hold women at gunpoint while _no one_ noticed or did anything.

The street was deserted. Of course it was.

Lance's mouth quirked up at Sara's attempt at a joke. Sara wondered if he actually thought that it had been funny, if he was feeling badly for what he was doing to her, or if he had knew about everything that had happened since Chicago and knew that Sara's days of going out for a cup of coffee with a stranger before she had run a full background check and had them followed for at least a week first were long gone.

"Get back into the car, Sara," Lance told her. If he kept using that gentle and terribly reasonable tone of voice with her, as if they really might be going on a date, then Sara swore that she was going to forget the gun and lunge at him. "Put your hands on the steering wheel." Where was his car? Was it possible that he could not drive and keep her under control at the same time? Sara's mind seized upon the first shred of hope and refused to let it go again. "Wait until I tell you otherwise. Don't touch anything else or do anything else. If you do, I will have to hurt you in order to get what I need, and I don't want to do that." If he could sound that sincere even now, then Sara figured that he could lie his way through anything.

She took a deep breath and nodded, casting one final look up and down the street even though she knew by now that no help was coming. Sara hated to turn her back on Lance even for a second, but she ignored the prickle of pure terror that was running up and down her spine and did so all the same. She had a feeling that her back was as straight as any soldier's as she slid into the driver's seat and placed her hands upon the wheel as she had been ordered.

Lance walked quickly around the front of the car. Sara had a sudden image of herself slamming down the gas pedal down to the floor and running him into the pavement before she realized that she had taken the keys out of the ignition when she had gotten out to find Michael again. Lance was watching her too closely now. Traveling through glass might distort a bullet's path somewhat, but certainly not enough to make it miss at this kind of range. Sara's breath made a whistling sound in her throat. She had another idea.

"I'm going to give you some directions," Lance said as he slid into the passenger's seat. He had managed to keep the gun trained on her the entire time. The barrel of the gun was still doing an excellent job of distorting the laws of physics, as to Sara's eye it was so much larger than the car itself in spite of being housed within it. "You are going to drive to them exactly, or else I am going to have to hurt-what are you doing?"

Sara had been reaching behind her to grope around for her seatbelt. Upon seeing the gun move in Lance's hand, she twitched and put her own hand quickly back into her lap. "I was going to put my seatbelt on," Sara said, taking pains to make sure that her voice sounded smaller and more frightened than she actually was. Not by much; Sara was pretty terrified without needing to exaggerate. A germ of an idea was beginning to form in her head. It was probably insane and without a doubt would be painful, but surely it was no crazier than smashing up her apartment, spraying her would-be assassin in the eyes with roach killer, and then making her escape by climbing out of the window and down the fire escape.

Lance flicked his eyes over her from head to foot. Sara could not help but have a moment of grudging admiration for how smoothly he had played her back in Chicago. Looking at those impersonal, just-business eyes now, she could not see how she ever could have mistaken him for anything other than what he was. "We won't be going far," he said, making a minute gesture with the gun to indicate that she should put her hands on the wheel again. As closely as she was watching the weapon, Sara was surprised that Lance was attempting to talk to her at all, rather than simply letting the gun do all of his communicating for him.

Damn it. Sara took a deep breath under the guise of regaining control of herself and considered the option before deciding that this didn't change anything. It was going to hurt, and hurt a lot, regardless of how she did it, but she really would have liked to have that seatbelt. "Okay," Sara said at last in a small voice, and started the car. Her hands were shaking, she noticed. Sara did not have to feign that much. As Lance, or whatever his name would turn out to be on the other side of this, put the car into gear for her, she noticed that a very fine trembling had overtaken his hands, as well. Sara was not feeling inclined towards empathy at the moment.

"Turn left out of the parking lot," Lance said to her. He was speaking in a low voice, a gentle and nearly regretful voice. Sara had to tune it out in order to focus.

"Okay," Sara whispered again. Much like the first time, she was speaking more to herself than she was to Lance, using it as a verbal talisman to keep herself under control. No panic, however, no urge to fly into pieces as most people would have done. Maybe the medical professors that she could barely remember through the haze of whatever drug she had been on at the time had been onto something.

Or maybe, Sara thought as she jerked hard on the steering wheel, to the right rather than the left, at the same time that she slammed her foot down against the gas pedal until she felt it touch the floor, they and she alike were just completely out of their minds. The car lunged forward with a roar that very nearly sounded like outrage.

From the passenger seat, Sara shouted her name and jerked the muzzle of the gun up in what Sara presumed was meant to be a threatening gesture. As if the mere presence of it was not a fairly convincing threat all on its own. 'You don't get to call me by my name,' Sara though on a rush of hot and sudden anger. 'Not when you can't even tell the truth about yours.' She put even more of her weight down upon the gas pedal, until she was nearly standing on it, all the while jerking the steering wheel around as fast as she was able. The cool, split-second thinking that Sara had discovered she was most good at in those moments when her life was in immediate danger suggested that Lance would not shoot her if she could get the car moving quickly enough so that his life would be in danger, too, but that was a hope, not a guarantee.

Sara took a deep breath as she finally got the car turned entirely around and the motel loomed up into view. She really, really would have liked the option of that safety belt. Glancing over once at Lance and seeing the realization move swiftly over his face before he clamped down on it again, she was pretty sure that he would have liked to have a seatbelt, too. "Now, that's not nice at all, is it?" he asked her in a voice that sounded much calmer than Sara imagined her own would be if she was trapped in a car with a driver who was determined to either seriously injure or kill the both of them, almost as if he was amused. Lance grabbed at her arm, his grip shockingly hard considering how calm he was. Only the fact that Sara had more adrenaline in her blood than plasma allowed her to shake him off.

Lance began to raise the gun as soon as he realized that Sara was not going to be brought under control again. 'Oh,' Sara thought in a strange mental voice, 'I guess I was wrong.' She was seeing the world as she would through a series of Polaroid snapshots, clear and sharp and without context.

Lance either did not have time to pull the trigger or was drawn into a last-minute moment of hesitation as he could not divorce himself from his mission (and Sara found that she still had time for her blood to run cold as she contemplated it). Sara instead watched with a disturbing clinician's focus as the front of the car hopped over the curb and met squarely with the hard brick wall of the motel's office. Watching the metal crumble in front of her and feeling her body start to lurch forward, Sara thought she maybe should have chosen the window rather than she solid wall. But that would not have disabled Lance, and she had a mind that disabling Lance was the only chance that she actually had. She could only hope that she would not be disabled too badly herself.

To Sara's left was a great booming noise, the gun going off. 'Wrong again,' she thought, wincing as she realized that her track record for that day sucked just that much, less than a second before her head slammed forward and her forehead impacted the steering wheel. The world exploded first into a bright and painful white, taking her breath away, and then shaded into first the gray and then the black.

End Part One


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two

Lincoln did not like the way that LJ was watching his grandfather at all: awed, nearly adoring, as if he was looking at a great American hero that the history books had not had a chance to catch up with. It was all that Lincoln could do not to grab his son by the shoulder and physically drag him as far away from his grandfather as he was capable of, into another room if they were not going to be allowed out of the house without completely breaking down the door and probably some heads.

Though he did was remaining calm for now, Lincoln did not intend to forget the similarities between this place that he was not allowed to leave and the last place that he had not been allowed to leave. From where he was standing, the furniture was more opulent here, but the spirit was the same.

Aldo paced close to LJ as he struggled to process the fact that the son that he had abandoned and who had been wrongly convicted and nearly executed as a result of his decisions three decades before, that his son might now have other ideas on his mind than what his father wanted of him. Lincoln was sure that it was a shocking revelation. In the meantime, it was all that he could do not to put his hand onto LJ's shoulder and draw him closer, maybe even push him behind him so that Lincoln would be able to shield him with his own body if the need should arise. He knew how to deal with LJ as a small child, and he knew how to deal with LJ as a man. When neither approach could quite be applied, he found himself unsure of he should do and which step he should take next.

Jane was watching him with those cool, dispassionate eyes that she had, making Lincoln wonder if his hand had not given some kind of betraying twitch that he had not been aware of. Under her frank, appraising stare, Lincoln had reason to wonder if there had ever been room for human emotion in those eyes, which were the same color as the crisp, tailored suit that she was wearing, or if she had always maintained that air of detached efficiency. Maybe she had at one time, and her involvement in the Company had sucked it all out of her. If this was a thought that was supposed to make Lincoln feel more kindly towards her, then it was failing. He could feel his eyes narrowing slightly before he turned away and back towards his father and son. Even though Aldo had vouched for the trustworthiness of everyone who knew the location of the safe house, Lincoln did not feel comfortable with any of them out of his sight.

"Does Michael have a cellular phone?" Aldo asked as he finally stopped pacing long enough to meet Lincoln's eyes again. It made all of the old, protective urges rise up in Lincoln all over again to hear Aldo call Michael by his familiar name. He did not know what he would have done if Aldo had actually referred to Michael as his son. Lincoln glanced over towards the son that he was struggling hard to keep from being too impressed with his grandfather and wondered if LJ would be trying to do the same with his own son in thirty years.

Lincoln shook his head. "No," he answered gruffly. "We've been using disposable phones. Safer. I don't know the number to his latest one."

Aldo paused and muttered a curse beneath his breath before he continued. "Yeah," he conceded without looking happy about it. He rubbed his hand over his face and then his hair, a gesture that was shockingly similar to one that Lincoln had seen Michael perform a thousand times before. Lincoln blinked. "You're right." He blinked again. "Jane?"

Jane had an eerie way of watching everything around her at once. Even though she turned her head in Aldo's direction and inquired, "Yes?" in a level tone, Lincoln still felt that she was watching him from the corner of her eye. The tip of her tongue darted out to touch at the split in her lip for a moment before disappearing again. Lincoln could not be sure, but he thought that her tongue might still be red with fresh blood. He had struck her pretty hard, even though it had been some hours before. Lincoln could still not bring himself to be sorry for it.

"Go get the van ready," Aldo told her in a brusque voice that still sounded as if he was more distracted than intentionally unkind. He shared that trait with Michael, too. It was alarming how much Lincoln's younger brother was turning out to be his father's son, considering that the two of them had never actually met, Aldo's words notwithstanding.

Jane nodded and left the room without speaking. Lincoln noticed that LJ was watching Jane's ass, which was admittedly not unappealing, as she exited. "Hey," he warned him in a reproving tone.

LJ jumped as if he had been caught doing something that he knew he shouldn't. He lifted his shoulders into a slight shrug and ducked his head to hide a grin before he muttered, "She's nice."

"She's something," Lincoln answered. LJ sure didn't seem to be holding the fact that he essentially been kidnapped by Jane against her. Lincoln tried to remember if he had ever been that forgiving when he was LJ's age, if the package was pretty enough. He had a feeling that he had been that forgiving right up to the day of his arrest. To Aldo, he went on, "Look, we appreciate your help-" The old man's eyebrows went up. Okay, so Lincoln might have to give him a point there, but hell would freeze over before he admitted it. "But I think my boy and me are better traveling alone. The fewer people, the fewer there are to attract attention."

Aldo shook his head. Even his stubborn expression was familiar. Michael took after their mother; seeing all of these expressions that reminded Lincoln so strongly of his brother crossing his father's face was becoming unsettling. "Not when the two of you are on every wanted poster in the nation," he answered. "They know that LJ is with you, and the media is all over it." Lincoln thought that the disgust in Aldo's voice meant that he was referring to the Company rather than to the legitimate cops, but there was no way of being sure. He could not help but feel a twinge when he thought of the officers that Jane and her people had run into a tree in order to extricate LJ and himself. Neither one of them had begun to move again by the time that Jane's vehicle had pulled away. "You need people with you who aren't being mentioned at the top of every news hour."

"Fine," Lincoln gritted, wishing that what Aldo was saying didn't make such a damnable amount of sense. "But you stop at the border. Michael's plan doesn't include room for uninvited guests."

"What if you didn't have to run at all?" Aldo asked him. His voice and demeanor were both so sincere that Lincoln could not help but scan the room for a trap. Jane had still not returned. "Terrence Steadman is still alive."

"Know that," Lincoln grunted. He continued to scan the room as that prickle of unease worked further into his back. "Seeing as I didn't kill him."

"Do you know how to prove to anyone else that he's still alive?" Aldo countered, for the first time sounding annoyed rather than merely resigned to Lincoln's continuing hostility. Lincoln felt his hackles rise even higher. Felt the anger building up in him, and it felt _good_. His gaze slid sideways to take in LJ, who for the first time was losing his awed look and seemed to realize that there was something far more wrong in this room than a few frayed tempers rubbing against one another. It was on the tip of Lincoln's tongue to tell LJ to leave the room for a few minutes. It had been pretty bad between Lisa and himself at the end, and LJ had been so small that he probably would not have remembered in any case, but they had always taken great pains not to conduct their fights where he could hear them. That same protective urge remained even now, in spite of the fact that LJ was only a few years shy of being a man himself and was not stupid in any case: he knew very well that his father and his grandfather were not fond of one another.

Maybe the protective urge would never leave, Lincoln admitted to himself ruefully, as he realized that an equal portion of his reasons for not ordering LJ out of the room had to do with not wanting to let the boy out of his sight for a second.

"Until you do," Aldo continued. If he had noticed the significant pause while Lincoln watched LJ, he made no mention of it. "You will always be running. And they will always be chasing you."

'Better being chased than pacing in a cage,' Lincoln thought but did not say. He could feel his eyes narrowing by a tick, while the house continued to feel too big, too quiet, and too altogether much like an Ad Seg wing that someone had put some energy into decorating.

Lincoln had a pretty good idea that the man that he was now resembled the kid that he had been when Aldo left so little that they were connected by name only, but something on his face must have still been recognizable. Aldo said softly, "That might be fine for you and Michael, your adults and can make these choices, but what about LJ? He's still a boy. He needs you to decide what's best for him."

The previous forty-eight hours of running had done such to LJ that he did not even bother to bristle in the typically teenaged way at being dismissed as too young to look after himself. Had Lincoln ordered him out of the room at that point, he thought that the boy would have gone willingly. Lincoln could feel anger rising up and off of his skin like a storm cloud. "You got a lot of nerve," he said in a voice that barely rose above a whisper. It did not need to. "You got a _hell_ of a lot of nerve, talking to me about family after you ran out on your own."

"I know," Aldo said, having the grace to look ashamed of himself for a second or two. Lincoln had no way of knowing if it was sincere or not. He was not going to lay any money on it.

"It took your guys less than an hour to get to LJ and me after we were caught," Lincoln continued, and found that his anger only grew stronger, rather than abating, as he went on. He took a deep breath through his nose and ordered himself to remain calm-relatively-rather than smashing up the furniture. "You been tailing us that close this entire time, and it never bothered you to just leave us twisting in the wind?" While LJ was on the very of being sent for a crime that he had not committed to a prison that was if anything even meaner than Fox River, while Veronica had been killed, while he and Michael had come close to being killed themselves, God, how many times? Lincoln thought of how thoroughly Michael had panicked when he had found out that Sara had been caught up in the wake of his plan, so that Lincoln had for several hours thought that at any moment Michael was going to throw his entire plan up and into the air so that he could dash back to Chicago and pull her out of the fire with his bare hands.

"You were safer alone then," Aldo said. His face did not betray any hint that he understood just how weak and bullshit his excuse was. Superficial similarities aside, Lincoln decided, Michael was much more like their mother. It was to his credit. "Now you're not."

That was…not even remotely an answer. Lincoln felt a line appearing between his eyes, but before he could point that out, Aldo said abruptly, "Jane should have been back by now." His tone had gone sharp, his face tight and focused, and the resemblance to Michael was starting to become clear again.

Lincoln twisted to look back in the direction that she had gone. He did not know how long it should take to prepare this van that Aldo was so concerned about, as they were traveling across a modern landscape from Colorado to New Mexico, not on camel-back across the ancient Sahara and with two people who could at the very least show their faces in public without having guns pointed at them. It was still taking too long, his father was right. The house seemed even larger and more intimidatingly quiet than it had before.

"LJ, come here," Lincoln said sharply, not caring that they were separated by only a few feet and Lincoln had no idea how he was going to protect LJ when he had no weapons save for his own body. Wide-eyed and suddenly nervous as he heard in his father's voice that now would be in the last time in the world to behave like an ordinary teenager and argue, LJ obeyed. He glanced around himself as if he, too, was beginning to pick up on the way that the house had begun to pulse with a deep and malicious life of its won before he stepped forward.

"He's safer away from you," Aldo said. He was not making any great effort to make his tone soft or apologetic; to hear him speak, he could care less if Lincoln heeded his words or went in the other direction and attached one of those kiddie leashes that soccer moms used in malls to LJ's belt loop. Lincoln ground his teeth together until he was almost surprised when he did not taste enamel. Slowly and with a terrible reluctance, he realized that his father was right.

"Through the kitchen," Aldo told LJ in a curt tone which said clearly that he was not a man accustomed to being disobeyed and showing for the first time how much it was costing him to indulge Lincoln even that much. "There's a door to the outside in there. Go to the trees and wait for us there. If no one comes for you in fifteen minutes, run."

"He's going to be picked off if he goes out into the open," Lincoln interjected, not willing to let his father take the small leeway that he had been granted too far. One father might be willing to throw his son onto a pyre so that he could go and fight his enemies alone. The other was not.

Aldo fixed him with a look that made him feel clumsy and stupid for even needing to ask, which only made Lincoln angrier. The apologetic rescuer was long gone and had left only the man who had been able to devote himself to decades of secrecy and murder. "They'll be aiming for you, not him."

Lincoln blew a long stream of air through his nose and decided, hell, none of the furniture in here was that damned nice. He jerked his head slightly to indicate that LJ should do as Aldo asked before he could vent his temper on the innocent wood, not sure that he could speak and still stay in control of himself. LJ disappeared down the hallway without making a sound. Lincoln listened for any whisper of LJ's sneakers across the tile and did not relax until he realized that he could hear none. If he could not hear, then neither could the people who would want to gun LJ down. Lincoln turned back and snarled at Aldo, "Don't do that again."

Aldo was unruffled. Lincoln imagined that he had faced many more and more threatening sights while he had been in the employ of the Company. It was not a thought that was calming him down. "I was telling the truth," Aldo said. Lincoln had no doubt. When talking about his former employers seemed to be the only time that Aldo could even get close to it. "They'll want to kill you and me first."

Maybe. Lincoln had been too generous in even granting him that much credit, he realized. "Old man," he growled, lunging forward and grabbing Aldo by the front of his shirt. He did not realize until then that he had denied his father the courtesy of his name. "You told me that he would be safe."

Aldo grabbed for Lincoln's wrist and twisted himself free. "I said that they would be aiming for us," he said. "We know the most. LJ will wait."

Unless whoever it was that the Company had sent-if they had sent someone, and he and Aldo both were not overreacting to laziness on Jane's part and the house's eerie and nearly personal way of distorting sound-decided that the surest way to punish Lincoln was to harm someone that he cared about. They had a funny way of doing that. Lincoln released his father, took a step back, and made a small sound from the back of his throat as he realized that he was the only one in the room who had made this leap. "Let's go." It wasn't his house and not his mission to be giving orders. Lincoln could not seem to give a damn.

Aldo's mouth twisted for a moment, the only sign of disapproval that broke his outward Zen. He produced a gun from nowhere and glided off through the house with a grace and silence that belied his increased age. Lincoln had no choice but to follow in the hopes of finding the enemy and dealing with them unless he wanted to stay behind and worry that he would at any moment hear a gunshot that would signify that LJ had been worth shooting, after all. Lincoln was not quite so silent as his father, having not received the training in the art of being a ghost that he imagined Aldo had. He had still been on the more dangerous side of division between law and chaos for a very long time before he had been put on death row. He knew how to transform all of his bulk into an advantage and still move with a speed and grace that belonged to a much smaller man. Lincoln's feet made only the very barest of thudding sounds as they came down upon the tile. He still wondered if that might not be too loud.

The entire house stayed silent, an imposing, ringing silence that seemed alive in its own right, that made Lincoln wonder if he and Aldo both had not been hunted for so long that they had not started to create enemies that were not there. The very softest of noises, nearly a sigh, from the entryway as he and Aldo were drawing near to it convinced him that it wasn't that simple. He froze with one foot poised to take a step and watched as his father, drawn ahead of him and already past the entryway, paused and turned. Lincoln turned into the shadowy hall with a speed and recklessness that surprised even him, forgetting that for the moment that he carried no weapon.

Jane was on her back on the exquisite floor, Aldo's man whose name Lincoln had never bothered to learn kneeling over her as her long cornsilk hair spread around her head in a fan. Her face was turning nearly as red as the blood that was trickling down from the lip that Lincoln had split earlier. Someone had punched her again to make it start bleeding once more. Lincoln, catching the details of the scene quickly but in a disjointed and out of order way, saw finally that the man who was kneeling over Jane in an eerie parody of an embrace also had his hands wrapped around her throat and was squeezing until his knuckles turned white. There was a red mark blossoming on his wrist that would darken into a bruise later, if Aldo's man lived long enough. At the moment, Lincoln was far from willing to guarantee that. A gun lay on the tile several feet away. Jane must have knocked it out of his hand before he could shoot her; she was lucky that she wasn't dead.

Lincoln could hear Aldo yell the man's name sharply and knew that he was probably lifting his gun to fire, but he wasn't thinking about his own well-being. Riding on a sudden and blinding rage, he lunged forward without thinking, taking the man around his midsection and driving them both to the ground. Jane was still kicking and fighting while she was being choked, her heels scuffling against the floor. She kicked Lincoln in the ribs by accident as he went past her. Lincoln could hear her beginning to gasp and wheeze behind him, but everything outside of the grunting and cursing of the man beneath him had descended into a low, buzzing hum.

Lincoln drew his fist back and put it into the man's face once, twice, three times, until he felt the slickness of blood spreading across his knuckles. The hand that had been gripping at his forearm fell away. Someone was yelling his name. Lincoln took a deep breath, heard the voice become marginally louder, and felt all of his weight and size become an enemy again as he settled back into himself. He slammed his fist into the man's face one more time without caring that the man was barely conscious and then rocked back onto his heels so that he could look around. Jane had pushed herself up onto one elbow so that she could touch at her bruised throat with her other hand. There were red marks in the ivory flesh that made the shapes of fingers and were already turning into bruises. Her eyes were still glassy and her breath was hitching in her throat every time that she tried to take it in too deeply. Lincoln wondered if she had not also taken a kick or two to the ribs as she was being subdued.

"Lincoln," Aldo said again. Lincoln realized for the first time that his father was the one who had been calling his name all the while. Even if she had been so inclined, Jane did not have enough of her breath back to be capable of it. He still had the gun out, though it was pointed firmly at the unconscious man beneath Lincoln.

"Yeah," Lincoln muttered, and stood. He examined his knuckles for a moment before he made a quick flicking motion to throw off the worst of the blood. It made a sound as it splattered against the door that echoed in silence that was only broken by his and Jane's labored breathing.

"Are you all right?" Lincoln asked her.

Jane had pushed herself up and was now sitting with her back braced against the coat closet, though she still did not look if she was up to standing. The panicked red color was bleeding back out of her face, and she wore an expression which suggested that the spirit had a whole lot of ass-kicking to do once the body was up to it again. "Yes," she said. Her hand touched at her throat again, and her voice sounded like a blues singer's.

"Good," Lincoln said shortly before he stepped over the inert body and put his hand against the front door. "I'm going to go find my kid."

"There could be more," Jane cautioned him, sounding surprised, or as surprised as Lincoln thought that she was capable of. Her eyes were as cool and reflective as ever. They were the sort of eyes that took in everything and returned nothing. Lincoln distrusted them immediately, though he had also known people with the very warmest of brown eyes who would have sold their own mother for spare parts.

"Don't care," Lincoln grunted as he threw the door open. The edge of it collided hard with the meaty part of the fallen man's thigh. Lincoln really could not bring himself to care. Aldo was already closing in on his man, the gun out. He barely flicked his eyes up to meet Lincoln's and acknowledge that his son was leaving at all. Whether it was approval to Lincoln for doing what Aldo had apparently never thought necessary or simple disinterest, Lincoln could not bring say. The list of things that he could not bring himself to care about was going to number in the hundreds by the end of the day.

In spite of his words to Jane, Lincoln paused as he stood on the porch and scanned for any movement that could be either his son or the enemy. "LJ," he called softly. A muffled thump arose from inside the house, and Lincoln turned his head to give the door a disinterested look.

There was a rustling sound that made all of Lincoln's hackles rise before LJ emerged from the woods at the end of the driveway. His hair was disheveled and his eyes were still a little wild. Lincoln almost expected to see leaves clinging to his collar. "Is everything okay?" LJ asked.

"No," Lincoln answered, and then gestured for LJ to come with him. He kept his eye on all of the shadowy places and exposed corners where someone could be hiding. He could not help but feel as if he was stoked out here for anyone to take a shot at him if they chose, and he could not stop thinking of the way that Michael would become so frustrated whenever Lincoln would forget, even for a second, that he could not simply stroll down the street the same way that he would before this mess had started. Picturing a thousand different guns being pointed towards him at the moment and a thousand different fingers easing back upon the triggers, Lincoln thought that he might finally be taking that lesson to heart.

It was all that Lincoln could do not to put his arm around LJ's shoulder and draw him close the way that he would have while LJ was small when LJ finally reached him. They went back into the house, Lincoln throwing a quick glance over his shoulder at the guard as he did so. LJ made a soft sound; Lincoln turned in time to see Jane put her heeled foot hard into the man's ribs. Guess that answered the question of whether or not she had been given a kick or two herself. The look on her face was not something that Lincoln wanted LJ to see.

"This way, kid," he said in a voice that came out gruff through worry that sound liked annoyance. He put his hand quickly onto LJ's shoulder and took the both of them into the kitchen. They wouldn't be able to hear anything but the very loudest of sounds from there. It occurred to Lincoln that he really ought to give a damn about those noises, but thinking about what could have happened to his kid, he couldn't seem to make the emotional math come together.

LJ exhaled a shaky breath once they were standing in the kitchen, which was clean, neat, and very well-lit for a place that was owned and operated by former terrorists. "That was close," he admitted.

"Yeah," Lincoln said. He dragged his finger across the counter and thought that he would like the place so much better if it more resembled a lair. "Listen, kid, you know that this has to come to an end someday, right?"

LJ glanced up, his eyes hooded and cautious. "I know," he said, and lifted one of his shoulders into a shrug. "They have to run out of bad guys eventually, right?"

Maybe not, and that was exactly what Lincoln was afraid of. In the thirty years since his father had left, they still had not run out. "I'm going to go check on your grandfather," he told LJ. LJ nodded, and Lincoln left him standing in the kitchen as he went to find Jane and Aldo again. If he found them doing anything extreme, he told himself, he was going to step into the middle and put a halt to it, however much he was sure that he would not want to.

As it turned out, Lincoln never had to make that choice. A shot rang out. LJ yelled from behind him in the kitchen. The shot had come from the other direction. Lincoln still ground his teeth together, pictured LJ falling forward with a bullet in the back of his head or between his shoulder blades, and all but sprinted back into the entryway.

Aldo's man was sprawled out across the tile floor with a bullet hole between his eyes. Lincoln had already made a decent ruin of his face with the four furious punches earlier, but the bullet hole still jumped out at him immediately. So did the flat way that the man's eyes were staring up at the ceiling. They were already beginning to glaze.

Lincoln ran his thumb across his knuckles and felt the last of the blood there flake away. There was a gun resting only a few inches away from the dead man's hand, and no way of knowing if it was there because he had dropped it when he fell or because it had been placed there to stage the scene. Lincoln glanced up at Jane and Aldo both without knowing what his expression must be.

Aldo was holding the smoking gun, literally. He engaged the safety before he shoved it back into the waistband of his pants. Aldo knelt beside the body and without waiting for a useless check of the pulse began briskly going through his pockets. Meanwhile, Jane was clutching at her wrist where a red mark identical to the one that she had bestowed upon Aldo's man was turning dark and angry. She noticed Lincoln looking and first snorted, then spat viciously to the side. "Tit for tat," she said. "He got the gun away from me."

"So it was self-defense," Lincoln said, making it something between a question and a statement.

Even when they were flashing with anger, those eyes were still cold. "I wouldn't kill a helpless person," she said. Realizing that she was not the one holding the gun, she then added, "And neither would Aldo."

Unless the both of them were so torn up inside because they had been really crappy office assistants while working for the Company, Lincoln doubted that. He didn't dignify the remark with an answer, turning instead to watch as his father rose to his feet. Aldo looked tired. He did not, however, look apologetic. "I worked with him for five years," he said to no one in particular as he stared down at the body. "He killed three of my men." Barely pausing to take a breath, Aldo went on, "We have to assume that everything here is corrupted. The Company could be arriving at any moment."

"I'll take another stab at the van," Jane said automatically. She leaned down, scooped the gun from the floor, and chambered a bullet before she slid out the front door. Lincoln did not think that she was in the mood to fire a warning shot.

"There's something else," Aldo said as Lincoln made to follow Jane. Lincoln had had a feeling that there must be. He turned back with an arched eyebrow. "Does your brother know a woman named Sara Tancredi?"

Lincoln felt his entire body tense. "He does," he allowed in a guarded tone. "Why?"

Aldo touched at the butt of his gun and looked troubled. "I'll explain on the way," he said.

End Part Two


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three

Alex's leg ached by the time that the rusty lock snapped and he freed himself. He only paused for a moment to rub at it before he limped swiftly from the factor, very aware of how much time he had squandered and far ahead of him Scofield cold be by now. While Alex knew what Scofield's endgame was, he still had no way of knowing how he planned to get there, and Alex's legitimate authority as an agent of the United States stopped at the border. Within the US, Scofield's and Burrows's deaths could be explained away with relative ease. They were violent criminals, one of whom would surely be executed within weeks of his recapture, and had through their reckless disregard for civilian welfare over the course of their escape had made it abundantly clear that they would maintain their freedom at any cost. Eyebrows would be raised when their deaths came so close on the heels of the Apolskis boy, but Alex was long past the point where he could be brought to heel by concerns of professional reputation.

If Scofield made it to Panama, though, Alex had no doubt that he would be sent into the wild right along with him. He would not be released from the hand that held his leash until he brought back the heads of both brothers as a gift. Whatever that releasing would entail, Alex had long since lost any desire to make this longer than it had to be.

Alex walked out of the factory, into the bright sunshine, and found only a set of tracks in the dust where he had last seen a very expensive government-issued car. He touched at the keys in his pocket exhaled a puff of air that almost wanted to be a laugh. Under a different set of circumstances, he thought that he might even have been having fun. According to Scofield's file, he had grown up with a background that nearly rivaled Alex's own. Father gone before Scofield had even been born, mother dead before he hit adolescence, a series of foster homes after that which frequently hovered on the verge of poverty and more than once descended into outright abuse. Scofield had been no stranger to the inside of a hospital room by the time that he had turned eighteen and been declared responsible for himself. In spite of this, almost in defiance of it, he had resisted the temptation that a lot of other kids in his position had fallen into to let it turn him mean and push him towards the other side of the law once it became clear that the legitimate side that it would not or could not protect him. Prior to the conviction that had sent him to Fox River, Scofield had not had so much as a misdemeanor on his record. If he had learned how to hotwire a car from his far more criminally industrious brother, then he had seen no need to let it show.

Meanwhile, the tall woman with the auburn hair who was almost certainly the infamous Dr. Tancredi had a similar and nearly pathological need to rebel against her upbringing. Father a successful lawyer who had then turned politician, upper class from the day that she had been born, and yet she had seen no desire to live up to that standard. Her criminal record had begun at the age of fourteen and had continued well into her stint in medical school, and had on two memorable occasions had included being caught with a boyfriend in a stolen car. The boyfriend had taken the majority of the blame each time. If Alex was asked to lay money on which one of them was responsible for the mysterious disappearance of his car, he would have put it squarely on the fairer sex.

"Got yourself quite a girlfriend there, Scofield," Alex muttered to himself as he realized how much time that he was wasting by standing there. He began walking the mile or so that separated the factory from the place where the chase had begun, putting himself within Scofield's and Tancredi's minds for a moment and figuring that they must surely realize how foolish it would be to spend any substantial amount of time in a government car that was clearly bearing the marks of a collision. They would have gone back only far enough to retrieve Tancredi's vehicle.

Alex was not elated to be right as he sighted his car sitting in the exact place where Tancredi had left hers as the chase began. He nevertheless wasted no time in jogging across the remaining distance, sliding into the front seat, and pulling out from underneath it a file that contained all of the latest information on the case. Alex's fingers were trembling slightly, hatred and not fear, as he lifted his cellular phone from his jacket pocket and punched in a number. "It's me," he said as soon as the phone was picked up and before the person on the other end of the line had a chance to acknowledge him.

"I know," Bill Kim answered smoothly. "I was not aware that you were the sort who required your hand to be held."

Alex tightened his hand around the phone until the plastic creaked. "The retrieval won't be necessary," he said curtly, flipping through the folder on his lap. Pausing for a moment so that he could stare at the mess that Tancredi had left of all of the wires beneath his steering wheel, he added, "But I'll need a new car."

"I'll see what I can do within a few hours," Kim responded in a voice so oily-smooth that Alex did not think that he would have been able to resist the urge to put his fist into the man's teeth if Kim had been standing in front of him. As he was already standing in a place much darker and more impossible to climb out of than any of the mistakes of his misspent youth, Alex was seeing less and less reason to acknowledge that the previous three decades of enlightenment had ever happened at all.

"Fine," Alex said, and heard a growl that he neither desired to control nor thought that he would be able to if he tried. "When you've decided that I've learned my lesson, send the car around. Maybe if I'll develop powers of teleportation I'll be able to catch him before he crosses the border."

Kim made a huffing sound on the other end of the line that maybe have surprise, may have been amusement that Alex still thought that he had the autonomy to make his sass meaningful, may have been a warning that Alex would pay for it later. Alex could bring himself to care equally about all three options. "Scofield's in Gila?"

"Scofield's in Gila," Alex confirmed. He thought of the woman who had been with him and decided that this was a detail that Kim did not need to know. Only under the most Draconian of justice systems would a woman be condemned to death for something that stood an equal chance of being a case of aiding and abetting or a simple moment of forgetfulness.

It was funny, how Alex still found his thoughts falling into the ones that he had entertained while had still been working towards anything that could be considered justice.

"Is Tancredi with him?" Kim asked immediately.

Alex allowed only the barest of pauses to go by before he answered, "No. Either the rendezvous hasn't taken place yet or she got spooked and called it off. He's alone."

The barest of pauses was apparently still plenty pause enough. "Of course he is," Kim responded smoothly. "You are not in a position where lying is wise, Alex. What kind of example does it set for your boy?"

If Alex continued to clench the phone so hard, he was going to wind up breaking it. He forced his fingers to loosen and exhaled a long breath before he said, "Scofield cares for her, and he knows that we're after him. The chances that he would tell her anything and risk that-" Were roughly the same chances that he would have said anything meaningful to the Apolskis kid.

"Don't worry, Alex," Kim cut him off. It was almost as if he was the one with the superpowers that Alex had spoken of so sarcastically a few moments before. "Your job remains only to locate and deal with the convicts. Agent Kellerman is equal to the task of capturing Dr. Tancredi and discovering what she may or may not know."

Meaning that, rather than a clean and relatively painless bullet to the back of the head, the Tancredi woman could expect several hours of torture before Kellerman either discovered what he wanted to know or grew bored with her and disposed of her body in several different locations of his own devising. Yes. Alex was setting quite the example for Cameron to live up to by standing by and allowing that to happen. The phone creaked warningly beneath his hand again as Alex replied, "Good." He felt as if he might be sick, and was pleased to hear that the nausea did not sound in his voice.

"A car will be made available to you within half an hour, then," Kim said, clearly winding up to end the conversation. "Give me your location and I'll send it to you."

Alex flipped rapidly through the folder in his lap before he answered. "First I'll need the GPS information on a car rented out to either Sara Tancredi or a Kelli Foster," he said. The dead woman's wallet had not been found among her things. There was a good chance that Tancredi was adopting her identity for the purposes of fleeing across the country. Alex doubted that either Scofield or Tancredi would be foolish enough to return to Tancredi's original motel. "Send the car to that location."

"Of course." Kim accepted the fact that Alex was essentially giving him an order with a smarmy grace that made Alex want to put his fist into Kim's face again. "I need not remind you that you are not to interfere in Agent Kellerman's task."

"No," Alex said. "I know my job." He hung up the phone and then reached beneath the steering wheel so that he could touch the wires that Tancredi had helpfully pulled out for him against one another. She was not the only one who could return to her roots when the need arose.

---

Michael sank back against the end table for a moment, staring down at the note in his hand and waiting, childishly, for the words to rearrange themselves into a more pleasing message. There was no clue to Sara's mental state in her hurried handwriting, no hint that she was feeling regretful or remorseful about her decision to flee. When pressed right down to it, Michael could not say that he altogether blamed her. A great many women would have refused to give their meeting a chance at all.

Sara had not had time to stew like Michael had, however, and realize that the same people who had launched the conspiracy against his brother and her father and were willing to send a corrupted (but not willingly, Michael's mind insisted, pointing out over and over again that the behavioral math simply did not add up, no matter how much he had misread people before) agent out to kill him would not stop there. The same logic that had applied to David would apply to Sara as well.

His decision made for him in a single instant, Michael exhaled and then hurriedly reached for his pants and shoes. Sara could yell at him, she could poke all of the holes in his plan that she wanted, she could pound her fists against his chest and even give him the punch in the kidneys that they both knew that he probably deserved. Sara could not, however, leave. After everything else that had happened to her because of him, Michael would not abide adding death to that list.

And if that entailed more manipulation and more of taking her autonomy away from her all over again? Michael paused with his hand on the motel room door and heard someone rev an engine in the parking lot outside. Then Sara could hate him forever, but Michael would throw her over his shoulder and carry her off like a caveman before he would allow her to be hurt.

The revving of the engine in the parking lot only grew louder, now accompanied by the squealing of tires. Michael suddenly had a terrible feeling, made all the more troubling because it was so irrational, that could not be displaced. He threw open the door and stepped out into the sunshine.

Stepped out, and then leapt back into the room again almost as quickly as a gray Taurus blew past him as such a speed that he would have been killed if his reflexes had not been fast enough to jerk him backwards again. It was not moving so fast that Michael could not see the blur of Sara's brilliant auburn hair in the driver's seat, or the profile of a man in the passenger seat. Michael swore bitterly and darted back into the hotel room, briefly cursing his own disinterest in weapons. His gaze fell upon the phone. Michael could hardly save her from a car crash, but the police would be almost as disastrous.

There was a loud screeching noise of traumatized metal and a crash that shook the entire building less than a second later. He dropped the phone and ran out the door again. Sara had, for reasons that were at present known only to herself but which Michael intended to ask her about as soon as he made sure that she was not dead, elected to drive her car directly into the side of the motel's office. The hood had been crumpled and pushed so far towards the interior of the car that the occupants would be lucky if they were not dead, even luckier if they were not spitting out pieces of the engine for the next week. Sara was slumped over the steering wheel, all of that hair falling forward and obscuring her face, and Michael thought for a moment that his heart was going to stop in his chest and leave the rest of his body to fend for itself. He rushed forward without pausing to think of the faces that were peeking out of the motel room doors, the shocked cries.

Sara began to twist and move as Michael reached the car. That was the cue for his heart to remember that it was more than just a shocked spectator to all of this and actually had a job to do. There was blood on her face as she straightened, and on her hand as she pushed her hair back. Sara blinked about her owlishly and for several seconds did not appear to know where she was. She jumped when Michael jerked hard and fruitlessly against the door in an effort to open it.

Michael gave the door three hard tries, putting such effort into each one that his shoulder threatened to go on strike the same way that his heart had a few moments before, before he was forced to admit that it was going to take much more than human strength alone to pry it open. He turned and saw, just before the entryway to the office, a flowerbed where a few bright marigolds were struggling to grow. More space was taken up by rocks than by flowers. That was just fine, so far as Michael was concerned; it was not the flowers that he was interested in. He picked up the largest rock that would fit his hand comfortably and then brought it down hard against the driver's side window. A starburst pattern appeared in the glass. Though the car was not smoking and the only sound that was emerging from the engine was a disinterested clicking sound, Michael still swore that he could smell gasoline. He brought the rock down against the window again, shattering it. Sara yelped from inside the car and flinched away from the shards as they fell in on her. She was not paying him a great deal of attention, Michael noted, but was instead watching the man beside her, who had also fallen unconscious and was just beginning to stir.

"Come here," Michael said, reaching into the car and grabbing Sara beneath her arms so that he could lift her from the car.

"Hey, man, you shouldn't move her, you could turn her into a quadriplegic or something," a kid who did not look yet old enough to drink said from behind Michael. Michael promptly ignored him. Deep inside the car, he could see the glitter of gunmetal.

"No," Sara muttered as Michael began to lift her out of the window. He was cutting his forearms on the jagged shards of glass that had not been knocked from the window, but he hardly felt it. Sara was bleeding from a long cut across her hairline that at the very least did not look particularly deep and had a red mark spanning across her forehead that would soon become a bruise. She was slurring her speech slightly and her eyes, from the quick examination that Michael was able to give them, did not appear to be reacting to the bright light at the same rate. "Michael, he has a gun."

"I know," Michael said. "We'll work it out later." He lifted her from the car and set her down on the ground beside him. Her legs only held her up for a few seconds, obliging Michael to sweep her up and into his arms before she could fall. A larger crowd was gathering around them by the second, and most of them were exhorting Michael to put Sara down before he wound up breaking her spine. Michael grit his teeth and ignored them all. Better he risk hurting her than they both be killed by virtue of staying and allowing their pursuers to know where they were.

Not that he was not taking an enormous risk as it was, for the crowd was not dispersing and someone surely had to have called the police by now. Michael probably still had time to flee and get away, if he moved quickly, but that would involve setting Sara back down to the pavement and leaving her to her fate. The man who was still in the car suggested pretty strongly what that fate would be. Michael ground his teeth against one another, spun with Sara in his arms to take in the growing number of people, one of whom was bound to put a name to the nagging feeling that they recognized him from somewhere sooner or later, and waited for the spark of a plan to come to him.

There was a screech of tires over pavement just as another car window was broken out behind him, and Michael thought, 'That's not what I meant.' The crowd parted way to allow a black sedan with a long streak of missing paint along its side to come screaming into the parking lot. Mahone slammed on the brakes so hard that it was a wonder that he did not put his own head through the windshield, and his face as he stepped free from the car was enough to make everyone scatter back even further and one or two who did not look as if they were on the right side of the law to slip quietly back inside. Michael's first thought upon seeing Mahone was, absurdly, that the man did not look well. His face was pale, and the angry, desperate conviction that had been driving him while Michael had held him prisoner was burning even hotter now, so that he seemed on the verge of being consumed into a cinder with it. Michael exhaled and took a step back, closer to the car, before he set Sara to her feet again. The look in Mahone's eyes was not that of a man in full possession of his faculties, and if he should shot at him, then Michael did not want Sara to be caught by the bullet that was meant for him.

Sara if anything was operating at an even shakier level than Mahone was. She wobbled back and forth for several long moments like a newborn colt before she gave up and put her hand back against the Taurus. Her hand left a sticky print of blood on the paint. "Oh, my God," she whispered as she finally caught on to the fact that it was Mahone and that he was holding a gun. "Michael, you pissed off the _Terminator_."

Michael was pretty sure that that was a combination of the concussion and the adrenaline poisoning talking, but he could not help but give Sara a look as he slowly raised his hands into the air. Mahone would not shoot them in front of a crowd, not unless he planned on shooting everybody who had gathered to watch the commotion. He was far gone, but Michael did not think that he was quite that far.

Did not think so, at any rate, but Michael had been staggeringly wrong about people before. He thought of how he had tried to reason with Mahone while he had still had the man trapped, and how frustrating it had been to see those glimmers of a good and rational man beneath the strain and the corruption, only to have that man twist away again every time that Michael thought he might be listening.

"It's okay," Mahone said to the crowd as he held up his badge with one hand and pointed his gun steadily at Michael with the other. There was no tremble in his hand. "I'm a federal agent, and these two are wanted criminals."

"I think someone already called the police," said the same young man who had been so troubled by Michael's lifting Sara out of the front seat.

Mahone's face tightened. Michael thought for a moment that he might put a bullet between the kid's eyes, and the crowd be damned. The darkness moved away from his face, if not his eyes, as he replied smoothly, "I can guarantee you that I outrank them."

Michael could hear a second loud cracking sound from behind him as the glass in the passenger window finally gave way. He did not turn his head to watch the man who had tried to take Sara captive emerge from the car. Trapped between two predators, it was the one that he knew, the one who had once been a good man, that Michael refused to take his eyes away from. "It's one thing to hunt me and my brother," Michael began, loudly enough for the entire crowd as well as Mahone to hear. The warning glare that he was given in return was hardly a deterrent, given what he already knew of Mahone and his plans. "But Sara, too? She's innocent in this."

"Aiding and abetting hardly makes someone innocent," Mahone snapped back, jerking his gun briefly in the direction of Sara. Her eyes were clearing of their fog more rapidly by the second, and she cast Michael an alarmed glance. He ignored it in favor of staring at Mahone hard, while Mahone for his part was occupied with watching the man emerging from the car as intently as Michael was listening to him.

"Is that a crime worth killing someone over?" Michael asked softly. Mahone's eyes jumped towards his. Beneath all of that muck that the man had surrounded himself with, Michael had no idea what he was seeing.

Before Mahone could answer, whether he was planning a real answer or, more likely, another arrow from the wall that Michael had been relentlessly throwing himself against, the sound of shifting from the car behind him became that of a pair of feet striking the ground, a muffled curse. Michael turned his head far enough to see a well-dressed man with a deceptively cherubic face leaning up against the car as if he would not be able to stand without it.

Sara, Michael noticed, was also watching him. "Michael," she said in a soft, frightened voice.

"It will be okay," Michael assured her.

She cut him a look. "I thought you were going to stop lying to me."

Fair point. "It's a work in progress," Michael murmured as he noticed that Mahone's eyes were moving rapidly between him and the new man, as if he was having trouble deciding who was the biggest threat from one minute to the next.

"Agent Mahone," the man with the cherubic face said as he found his balance again. He was wearing sunglasses, but one of the lenses was cracked out as a result of striking his head against the dashboard when Sara had implemented her kamikaze mission. Michael saw that he had been right in his original assessment of the man's angelic looks, for the eyes were chill, practical, and impossible to negotiate with. "Thank you for your help. You arrived just in time." Michael could not be certain and did not want to give himself false hope, for he was becoming well-accustomed by now to Mahone's actions and his demeanor telling two entirely different stories, but he thought that he saw Mahone's upper lip curl slightly before he acknowledged the thanks with a jerk of the head.

The new man ran his eyes across the curious crowd and looked as if he were struggling to hold back a moue of disgust. "Thank you for your help, folks, but we don't need you anymore," he announced. "I'd like all of you to go back inside and wait until the Gila police give you the all clear to come back out again. I don't want anyone getting hurt if these two get desperate and stupid." The man locked eyes with Michael long enough to let Michael know that it was his most fervent wish that Michael would do something stupid. "_Now_," the man added in a fierce tone when the few who looked as if they had nothing to fear from police attention were slow to obey. "Dr. Tancredi, come here." Though he was holding a weapon on her, she still looked swiftly back at Michael. He had a few ideas in his head, but they made the Panama plan that she had disliked so much look like a well-oiled machine in comparison. Mahone had a line of sweat dotting his forehead under the sun. They all did, for June in New Mexico was nothing to take lightly, but it was Mahone who Michael found his eye being continually drawn to. "Dr. Tancredi, need I remind you that you are not the one in control here?"

'That doesn't mean that you are, either,' Michael thought, at the same time that Mahone said sharply, "No." Though the veneer of calm on the surface appeared unchanged, Michael got the curious feeling that underneath it Mahone wanted nothing so much as he wanted a good, stiff drink. "I'm to take Tancredi into custody along with Scofield."

Their new man stopped looking like an angel everywhere, finally, and not just around his eyes. An angry flush rose up in his cheeks. He stepped forward and around the car. "That's not the plan, _Alex_," he said, putting a deliberate stress upon Mahone's first name that managed to be both an insult and a threat.

Whatever moment of conflict that Mahone had gone through before announcing that he was going to be taking control of Sara as well as Michael, either it had ended or he had learned to hide it better. "Orders have changed, Agent Kellerman," he said smoothly. "Maybe you're out of the loop." Mahone pointed his gun at Michael while Michael was preoccupied with watching Agent Kellerman jerk back as if he had received a nearly physical blow and said, "Come here and turn around."

"Michael," Sara whispered next to him, while Michael in one flash of insight came to two very important conclusions.

"Trust me," Michael whispered back to her, while Mahone said, "_Scofield_" and let his gun say a few more things besides that his voice did not. Sara flashed him a look that even in the midst of her remaining mental fog said clearly that trust was the very last thing that he was allowed to ask of her at that moment. "I have an idea."

Michael walked over to Mahone as he was commanded, turned around, and crossed his wrists behind his back. He maintained eye contact with Sara, who looked scared and angry and determined all at once as Agent Kellerman came up to her and, Mahone be damned, took her possessively by the elbow. There was such a great deal of the first emotion moving across her face that it was not until someone knew her well that they could appreciate the second and the third. Michael hoped that that would work in their favor.

"What is he going to do to her?" Michael murmured as Mahone behind was forced to holster his gun and trust in Agent Kellerman's own weapon to keep Michael subdued. The first touch of Mahone's fingers against his wrist stilled for a moment. "Not kill her. You can do that yourself. Sara's as innocent as David was, and you have no reservations against killing." Michael felt a bitter twist overtake his mouth for a moment as he threw Mahone's own words back at him.

The fingers paused for only a second before they resumed their work, and Michael felt the first cold bite of a handcuff around one of his wrists. If he allowed it to get to the second, then he and Sara both were done where they stood. "Interesting theory," Mahone said. "Why don't you tell it to me in the car, if you can do it succinctly. There won't be time for much else." Up close, Michael realized that Mahone had not overcome his conflict from a few moments before, only learned to hide it better: his voice was less steady than a power line in a high wind. Surely the possibility of Oscar Shales's murder being discovered could not do this to a man, Michael thought, and wondered what the other options could possibly be.

"So what is it, then?" Michael continued as if Mahone had not spoken. He felt the hands go still again. Mahone's skin was very warm against Michael's own. "What is it that he's going to do to her that is so bad that you would rather take her with you and kill her yourself? Is he going to rape her? Torture her?" The momentary hitch in Mahone's breath behind him was the most overt confirmation that Michael was ever going to receive.

"Oh," he breathed out, suddenly feeling sick. Sick, and angrier than he could remember being in years. "So that's it. He's going to torture her. Because she knows something, or for his own pleasure?" When Mahone did not answer, Michael went on, "I don't suppose that it matters, in the end. Sara is going to die horribly, and you're going to allow it because you're too frightened of whatever hold the Company has over you to remember that you used to be a good man."

The hand around his wrist became a vice, jerking Michael even more closely towards Mahone than he had already been standing. A few more inches and they would be pressed flush against one another. "Scofield," Mahone whispered against Michael's ear, all of the hesitation fled from his voice to leave it hot and pulsing with anger instead. "There are layers and layers to this that you cannot begin to understand, and until you do I suggest that you keep your goddamned mouth shut." Mahone's ragged hot breath pushed against the skin beneath Michael's ear. Michael realized that it was the first time that he had ever heard Mahone swear.

"Gila's a small town," Michael said by way of reply. "Lots of isolated back roads. That gives me, what, about half an hour to make all of the pieces fit?"

Mahone huffed out a laugh against the side of Michael's neck. It was as dark and bitter as day-old coffee, and sounded as if Mahone would never laugh from joy again. Before he could answer, Agent Kellerman called out, "Is there a problem, Alex?" He must have tightened his grip upon Sara as he said it, for her face contorted for a moment in pain. Knowing what he knew now, even with his general aversion to violence Michael could not help but wish for a moment that he had taken the rock around to the passenger's widow, broken it, and then broken the man inside as well.

"No," Mahone answered, sounding angry that he had allowed a visible break in his self-control to appear at all. Michael felt the first cold touch of the second cuff around his other wrist and thought, 'No trouble at all.' He stared hard at Sara and hoped that she would be able to catch up.

The useful thing about being a structural engineer was that it required a nearly perfect sense of spatial awareness. Michael stepped back into Mahone before the second handcuff could be locked into place and felt both the flush of skin and heard Mahone's startled exhalation. It turned into a grunt as Michael drew his elbow forward and then slammed it back as hard as he was able into Mahone's abdomen. The unlocked handcuff slipped down over Michael's hand, covering his knuckles. Michael spun free from Mahone's grasp and then drove the hand with the impromptu brass knuckles viciously into Mahone's face. He grappled for the gun with the other. Michael had never had an interest or an aptitude towards violence, not even during those sporadic occasions from his youth when Lincoln had tried to teach him how to fight. Playing what would have happened to Sara without intervention in his head, it was easy to convince himself that this time was the exception.

The useful thing about being a federal agent was that they were the cream of the crop, and trained to deal swiftly with virtually any resistance that a prisoner might offer. The brief, shocked burst of air was the closest thing to an advantage that Michael was able to gain. The hand on his wrist turned into a vice and struggled to jerk Michael away from the gun as Mahone pulled his lips back from his teeth. Mahone was bleeding from cuts across the bridge of his nose and beneath his right eye, courtesy of where Michael had struck him with the cuffs, and his gaze was dark and furious. If he was still having doubts about his role in an organization that tortured and killed innocent people, then Michael doubted that he was going to let it slow him down again.

Michael was younger and slightly stronger, and had an advantage of leverage by having Mahone trapped between the car and himself, but Mahone had been doing this kind of work for a very long time. Pain sharp enough to make Michael's vision go white radiated up from his wrist as Mahone put a savage pressure down on the tendons and nerves on the underside, and Michael thought that he might have ceased struggling for the gun altogether if he had not heard Sara shrieking behind him. He risked whatever consequences that distraction might bring by twisting slightly to the side and peeking over his shoulder. Michael saw that Sara had used Michael's movement as an opportunity to lunge forward and make a bid for Kellerman's own weapon. She and Kellerman were currently grappling over the gun, a battle that was not coming to the swift end that it would have ordinarily, as the car crash had injured them both and thrown them off their game. Kellerman was having trouble using his superior height and weight against her while it was looking as if he was battling back a head injury even worse than Sara's own. Sara, gradually coming to be pinned back against the remains of the Taurus, tried to bring her knee up and into Kellerman's groin. She missed when he twisted with a speed that belied his injuries and wound up striking him in the meaty part of his thigh. Kellerman's loud grunt said that she had put a good deal of force behind it.

Michael's moment of distraction did wind up costing him, in the form of an elbow to the face that snapped his head back and filled his mouth with the taste of blood. Rather than indulging in a few moments of disorientation, he brought the hand that held the cuffs twice more into Mahone's face. Each time, the skin split beneath the metal, each time fresh, warm blood went trailing across Michael's knuckles, each time he felt a little more dismay. He had not been made for violence, either the implementing it or the enjoying of it, and he could not help but be sickened by what he was doing now.

Blood flowed down into Mahone's eyes, blinding him for only a second before he was able to shake his head and throw it free. Didn't matter; Michael had grown accustomed to having to react with a moment's notice to deviations from the plan. He drove Mahone back against his car until the other man grunted with the force of his shoulders hitting the metal and then pushed his thumb hard into Mahone's wrist. Michael hoped that he was a good mimic.

He was, and was told so when Mahone gave a short, sharp gasp that sounded as if it wanted to be much louder. His grip upon the gun that they were both grappling over loosened by a fraction. Michael had not expected to gain an advantage that big and would not be able to help but wonder later if Mahone had not on some level been glad of it, whether it was on a conscious one or not, but in the moment itself he was not inclined to ask questions. Michael wrenched the gun free from its holster at long last and then stepped back quickly, disengaging the safety and then covering the trigger with his finger.

Mahone leaned back against his car and panted as he watched Michael back away with the prize in hand. He did not seem overly concerned with the fact that Michael was now carrying a loaded weapon, but that could be the blood that was still running down his face and obscuring his expression. It was difficult to mistake the look in his eyes for anything other than calm, steady self-assurance, however.

"You're not going to kill me, Scofield," Mahone said in a voice that probably would have been reasonable under other circumstances. "Not if you couldn't even do it when you didn't have to get your hands dirty." Everyone was always so confident about what Michael would or would not do, he reflected, even himself, and always so shocked when they turned out to be wrong. As if he was thinking along these same lines, Mahone touched lightly at the cut across the bridge of his nose and rubbed his fingers together as he stared at the blood.

That same blood was now drying across Michael's knuckles and making the skin itch. It was not a feeling that he enjoyed. "You're right," he told Mahone. "I don't have it in me to be a killer. I don't think that you did once upon a time, either." 'And that was before your organization decided to hurt Sara.' Mahone's eyes came alive with something that might have been fury, had Michael waited long enough to decipher it. He instead flipped the gun around so that he was holding it by the barrel, stepped close to Mahone so that their bodies were once again only inches away from one another, and swung the butt of the gun as hard as he could against Mahone's temple. Mahone tried to block the blow, his fingers a moment of shocking warmth curling around Michael's forearm, but youth took its edge over experience in this round. Michael was not sure that Mahone was really trying all that hard, in any case. His mind prickled to know why, and filed it under the list of questions that could be asked later.

Mahone slumped forward bonelessly and with a nearly sub-audible sigh. Michael could have caught him before he struck the pavement with scarcely any effort at all. He thought of what would have happened to Sara if he had been unable to wrestle that gun away and didn't try.

Michael flipped the gun back around until he was holding it in the correct position again, if any position could really be said to be the correct one. They all felt foreign and strange to him. Michael stared down at Mahone's prone form for a few lingering and oddly detached seconds, unable on a visceral level to convince himself that he had really done such a thing, before he remembered Sara suddenly and spun towards her.

Kellerman had Sara backed up against the Taurus, covering her body with his in a way that made Michael's breath catch in his throat. It was not until Kellerman began to back up with his hands rising slowly into the air that Michael realized what had happened. Sara looked no more comfortable holding a gun than Michael felt, and her hand was shaking every bit as badly as his own. Sara glanced over Kellerman's shoulder at Michael, saw Mahone's prone form at his feet, and widened her eyes.

"Watch the other one, not him," Michael snapped.

Sara jerked her eyes away from Mahone and back towards Kellerman as he started taking the opportunity to sidle close again. She did not fumble before she found the safety and disengaged it. Between that and her ease in hotwiring the car earlier, Michael was willing to bet that she had quite a few tales to tell out of school.

"I don't think that you're going to shoot me, Sara," Kellerman told her in a low, soothing voice. Though Michael supposed that he could have picked up Sara's name from a file somewhere, but the tone of his voice as he said her name said otherwise. Michael kept a close eye on them both as he knelt to begin going through Mahone's pockets for the key to the handcuffs. He saw the flash of uncertainty that moved across Sara's face.

"He was going to torture you to death, Sara," Michael told her in a low voice.

Sara's mouth fell open for a moment before she looked at Kellerman's face and resolved herself. Michael found the kept to the handcuffs at last and unlocked the one that Mahone had managed to snap around his wrist. He turned the agent over and locked Mahone's own wrists together instead. When he glanced up again, Sara's hand had stopped trembling. "You need to back up," she told Kellerman in a voice that crackled. Though Kellerman's easy smile scarcely flinched, he no longer looked certain that Sara would not kill him.

"Keep the gun on him," Michael told Sara as he opened the door to Mahone's car and began putting the agent into the back seat. He glanced up and saw a few faces peeking at him from around the motel curtains, which twitched quickly closed again. There was still no sound of approaching sirens, even though the police were long overdue. Michael was more convinced than ever that either Mahone or Kellerman had put in a call keeping them away, and that they were regretting it now.

"Not a problem," Sara said.

Slamming the door shut behind Mahone's prone form, Michael said, "Okay." Sara began to inch around Agent Kellerman, who was looking more furious by the second. Yeah, someone was _definitely_ regretting not allowing the local police to get involved.

"How far do you think that you're going to get before someone catches up to you?" Kellerman asked Michael. "Every day the distance gets a little shorter." He jerked his head in the direction of Sara. "And what will happen to her on that day?"

Sara saved Michael the trouble of answering by responding coldly, "About what you already had planned, I think."

Michael's lips quirked upwards for a moment before he told Sara, "Get into the car." She went, keeping the gun trained on Kellerman until the very second that her head disappeared into the passenger side door. "Think we'll take our chances." He ducked quickly into the car himself and barely waited until he had the door closed before he was slamming his head down against the gas pedal.

In the passenger seat, Sara dropped the gun to the floorboard with a thump and then rubbed briskly at her jeans as if she had touched something filthy. Her eyes were far, far away, and the blood that started at her temple and then ran in a slow trail down her cheek was very red. Michael hated to drag her back to the earth, but they didn't have a great deal of time.

"You were perfect back there," Michael told her, because she was looking lost.

Sara flashed him a wan smile. "Never did anything like that before," she confessed.

"You were perfect," Michael repeated. He hesitated for a moment, watching as Sara touched at her head and winced. The red mark that stretched across her forehead was already darkening into a bruise. She would not be able to go out without turning heads for at least two weeks. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to need you to hotwire another car. We can't go far in this one."

"No, that's fine-" Sara broke off, snapped her mouth closed, and took several deep breaths. Looking in the rearview mirror, she said slowly, "Michael, why are we kidnapping a federal agent?"

"He knows about Panama," Michael said.

Sara gave up on trying to assess Mahone's condition from the rearview mirror and twisted around in her seat, wincing as she did so. Probably had a few bruised or broken ribs, too. Michael resolved to keep an eye on her, nearly as much as he would the person in the back seat. "So you're going to take him to Panama in your suitcase?"

"No." Sara turned in her seat and arched an eyebrow at him. "Just to the border. If he knows about Panama, then you might also know about Bolshoi Booze." Michael shook his head as he took them swiftly down a side street where there were few cars and fewer people. "His authority stops at the border. All that we have to do is get there and leave him behind." Sara continued to give him a dubious look, as if she was seeing all of the many, many flaws in that plan and was only waiting for a less fraught time to point them out. If that was the case, she might have a long wait ahead of her. Mahone might have told other agents about Bolshoi Booze, or it might be that he was so thoroughly corrupted that he would not care that his authority ended at the border and would pursue them all the rest of their lives. That left the option of either taking him across the border and praying for a moral awakening, or of killing him.

Michael ignored the feel of Sara's stare against the side of his face and turned down yet another side street. He would have to come up with a third option, then. He always did.

End Part Three


	4. Chapter 4

Part Four

Alex's head ached in a way that it had not ached since he had given up heavy drinking as a younger man, and his face was pinched and tight. He shifted and tried to touch at the bridge of his nose and see what kind of damage had been done there, only to discover that his hands had been secured behind him with, as he curved his fingers around the skin-warmed metal, his own handcuffs. Alex first froze, and then began directing a calm, measured litany of obscenity into the upholstery beneath his cheek. He could feel the vehicle moving all around him and heard the whir of the engine.

At the sound of Alex's low outburst, the conversation that had been taking place in the front seat creaked as whoever was sitting in it shifted their weight around. The driver did not move. Alex swore again and finally opened his eyes, wincing when the light hurt them. There were bloodstains, he noted, on the upholstery on which he had been resting. It would appear that he had miscalculated when he had decided that being incapable of killing meant that Scofield was incapable of any violence at all. A mistake that would not be made again.

"Hello," a feminine voice from the passenger side said as Alex struggled to sit up. He raised his eyes up to meet the gaze of a pretty redhead, the Tancredi woman who might or might not also be Scofield's paramour.

As he fought to sit up without using his hands and while his head still felt as if it had been placed inside a drum kit, Alex found himself hoping that Scofield and Tancredi were, not only involved, but outright sleeping together. If he found out that she had joined this whole mess with no personal angle in mind at all, then he might have to hate her.

"Hello," Alex answered her when he was finally upright again. He ran his eyes across Tancredi as he did so. She had a cut at her temple that was still a bloody, clotted mess. She had a bruise that bore a suspicious resemblance to the top of the steering wheel forming across her forehead. She was moving as if it hurt her when she twisted around in her seat, and all things considered, she was lucky that she had not been taken away from the scene in an ambulance.

'I kept you from being tortured,' Alex thought, looking at her, and then, 'I might have sacrificed my family for you.' The thought came accompanied by what was the closest thing to pure panic that Alex had felt in a very long time. Allowing his better nature to rise up had been an instinct, something that he had not allowed himself to think about too deeply or too long in case he should then change his mind. There had been only a vague accompanying thought that he could manage any fallout that came his way. By the time that his masters managed to find his leash again in order to give it the appropriate jerk, Scofield and Tancredi would already be dead and he could then play it off as a mistake in communication. His services would still be needed in order to hunt down Burrows. Possibly Alex would wind up paying for that mysterious mistake later, but his illusions that he would might make it out of this predicament alive had been slipping away from him for some time now. He simply knew too much.

'So do Pam and Cameron,' that damning voice in his head began again, the one that Alex hated because it managed to sound so moral and so logical at once. 'Or at the very least, they do in the minds of the people who wanted you to kill David Apolskis.' That, coupled with the convenient way that his supposed kidnapping had coincided with the exact moment when he had begun to break ranks…

Alex felt his breath catch in his throat, and any pretense of control that he might have been maintaining up to that point dropped away from his as abruptly as shrugging off a coat. He swore in a ragged voice and with a vehemence that he had not heard coming from himself in a very long time, and began twisting hard at the handcuffs that were holding his wrists behind his back. The cuffs were not about to break from the power of one crazed man throwing himself against them, and Alex soon moved past the point of bruising and until he could actually feel blood running down his wrists. If he had given a good goddamn about his own personal welfare at that moment, he might have stopped, but the strength of metal against the strength of human skin was not something that he was thinking about at that moment. It was too crisp, too calm, too unemotional, and Alex was in a place far beyond logic.

Tancredi was exhorting him to stop before he wound up hurting himself, and Scofield was watching him in the rearview mirror with those cool, clever eyes that Alex, in a burst of fury, wanted to put out so that they could not continue to ask him what had happened and why he wasn't _better_ . "Let me go," Alex growled instead, bringing both of his legs up and driving them with all of his strength into the back of Scofield's seat. He saw the wince in the way that the skin around Scofield's eyes tightened, but Scofield only pulled the car over to the side of the road.

Tancredi hardly waited for the car to roll to a halt before she, ever the doctor, was reaching for her door handle so that she could get out and presumably come around to the backseat. She was stopped by Scofield saying sharply, "That's what he wants you to do."

As if Alex was faking the utter and complete panic that was coursing through his system. As if he was imagining his wife and child dead in a crime that would never be solved or worse, simply disappearing without a trace, so that he could get one over on Michael Scofield's overly caring little girlfriend. It was a particularly twisted new form of method acting. Alex kept himself from laughing only because he knew that if he started, it would be only seconds before he was sick.

"Let me go, or I swear to God-" he said again, only to make an impatient sound when Scofield only stared at him. "What do you _want_? Do you think that you're going to get a ransom for me? Do you think that you're going to make them leave you alone by holding me hostage?"

"No," Scofield answered calmly. He was looking at Alex as he would an interesting new math problem, and Alex did not like it at all. "I don't think that you mean anything to them at all."

"We've already established that you're not going to kill me," Alex said, still struggling. He could feel the blood seeping into the seat behind him.

"No," Michael said, though Alex saw a betraying flicker around his eyes. He did not seem inclined to say more.

Alex swore again without caring that he sounded like a wounded animal and threw himself back against the seat. He spent several long minutes continuing to struggle, thinking that it would soon not be a matter of choice before he was sick, as visions of what would be done to Pam and Cameron in order to punish the errant soldier filled his head. Scofield and Tancredi watched in a silence that, broken only by the sound of Alex's hasty breathing and whispered curses, steadily more oppressive.

Alex twisted enough so that Tancredi could see what he was doing to his wrists. "Michael, the blood," she said in a worried tone.

"Shh," Michael responded, and continued to watch Alex with those eyes.

Alex had thought that his fear and his fury would never run out and was so shocked when they did scarcely ten minutes later, leaving him exhausted and empty in their wake. He closed his eyes and felt the sweat prickling all across his body. From the front seat, Scofield asked in a curious tone, "All of that was about Shales?"

"Shut up, Scofield." Alex's voice was scarcely audible.

Scofield was silent for so long that Alex had even begun to hope that he would listen, but the universe was not interested in being so kind. "We only have to keep you captive until the border," he said. "Then you can do whatever you want. Chase us across it, go back to your _masters_-" There was a contempt in Scofield's voice as he pronounced 'masters' that made Alex's eyes flash open even as he had heard it coming from his own mouth many times before. "Just disappear, if you want. I don't care."

"Thank you so much for keeping me informed of our itinerary."

"I only thought that you might like to be told again," Scofield said as he pulled the car away from the shoulder, "that your life is not in any danger from us."

"Well, there's that." Though Alex could feel the car picking up speed beneath him, he did not sit up to see where they were going.

---

The car rolled to a halt when the sun was slanting low through the windows. Alex could feel it on his face, though he did not open his eyes. The fit-the tantrum, he supposed it ought to be called, but that made it sound powerfully as if he had been upset over not getting his desired candy or a cheap new plastic toy rather than the fact that he very well might have condemned his ex and son to death-had left him cocooned with a sick, exhausted kind of apathy. He could hear Scofield and Tancredi talking to one another in low voices in the front seats. Alex made little effort to attend to the ebb and flow of the words, least of all Tancredi's. 'I kept you from being tortured,' he thought in her direction as he had before. Unlike before, however, there was no reluctant tinge of pride, not knowledge that at the very least he was not so far gone that he could stand by and allow that to be done to another person (yet). Now, knowing that his moment of better instinct might have killed Pam and Cameron, he thought that he hated her a little bit.

The car rolled to a stop, and Scofield and Tancredi began another one of their low conversations in the front seat. In spite of himself, Alex rose out of the fog long enough to listen. Testing the cuffs had been fruitless, as he should have known that it would be and would have known if he had been in his right mind when he had tried it. That did not mean that another opportunity would not arise, if he was clever and calm.

"I don't want to leave you here," Scofield was saying, his voice low and distressed. "He's…" There was a lengthy pause in which Scofield was audibly struggling to discover the best way to describe Alex. Funny. Most of the time, Alex had the same problem when it came to Scofield. "He could be dangerous."

Tancredi's response was a soft and disbelieving laugh. Whether that was because Scofield had needed to say that Alex _could_ be dangerous, when Alex had already chased the two of them through a factory with a gun in hand in the determination of killing at least one of them, or because everything in her life had taken such an abrupt turn towards the dangerous that protesting a slight increase was ridiculous, Alex could not say. "I look like I've just been in a horror movie. There's no one else who can go."

Scofield made an angry huffing noise, followed by a scuffling sound that made Alex think that he was dragging his hand over his hair. "Yeah. Keep the safety off."

"Will do."

Alex gave up on playing opossum, opening his eyes again and sitting up even though his head continued to ring like a gong as it expressed its displeasure with him. The once firm hypothesis that Scofield could be counted on to avoid violence at all costs was falling onto shakier ground by the moment. Alex closed his eyes, waited for several moments until the sick swinging sensation had halted, and opened them again to see that Scofield was watching him in the rearview mirror. He was still wearing a look as if Alex was a particularly interesting puzzle that Scofield was still invested in figuring out. It was all that Alex could do not to sigh.

Scofield finally turned his eyes away from Alex, and Alex took the opportunity to take stock of his surroundings. The car was parked in the shadow of a darkened alley, the engine still running. There was no one around, no way of knowing where he was, and Alex allowed himself a moment to swear softly under his breath for failing to pay more attention to his surroundings. Personal worry did not make an excuse. Alex exhaled and vowed that it would not happen again. He knew that they would not head south immediately, that they would make some running room for themselves before they crossed the border. That was a start.

Scofield went through his wallet for a few moments before he confessed, "I'm not sure that I have enough for everything." He gave a rueful snort and flashed Sara the kind of smile that Alex was fairly certain he was not supposed to be a witness to. "I agree that I'm not a very good thief."

Though Alex could only see a glimpse of Tancredi's profile around her headrest, she appeared to be smiling. "Probably a good sign." She ducked down low, and Alex presumed that she was going through the purse at her feet. There were several moments of hustling before Tancredi said in a tight voice, "My wallet is missing." She exhaled sharply, sounding more panicked than Alex had heard her even when Paul Kellerman had been holding the gun on her and her chances of escape had been slim, and began rummaging through the purse again.

Scofield leaned over Tancredi and put his hand against her shoulder. His expression was concerned. "Sara, it's okay, they already know who you are-"

"Not that." Tancredi continued to go through her purse without looking up at Scofield. At long last, she let out a sigh of relief so deep that it sounded as if it hurt her. "It's still here." She was hunched over to look at something in her hands that Alex could not see, and that he was not going to crane his neck in order to catch a glimpse of. Scofield was doing enough of that for him, his expression concerned. He cast a glance into the backseat at Alex once, as if he was concerned that Alex might be seeing and hearing too much. Alex felt his face twisting into an even deeper scowl. Kidnap a federal agent and involve him in your jaunt to get a series of several escaped offenders across the border, deal with the consequences that arose.

"Sara," Scofield began in a tone that was half-concern and half-warning.

Tancredi twitched and glanced over her shoulder at Alex as if she had forgotten that he was there for a few moments. "I'll explain later," she said to Scofield. "But that means that I don't have any money, sorry."

"Guess I get to learn how to be a better thief," Scofield said, sounding equal parts rueful and resigned. He raised his eyes to meet Alex's in the rearview mirror for a moment before he exited the car. "Don't kick me," Scofield warned as he walked around the car and opened the door to the backseat.

"I have more dignity than that," Alex snapped back, employing a strategy of refusing to acknowledge that his earlier fit had occurred at all in the hope that Scofield would do the same. He watched Scofield carefully in spite of his promise not to do anything so crass as kick out at Scofield like a striking mule, waiting for any opportunity that he could turn to his advantage. Scofield had left the gun behind in the front seat, however, and did not seem inclined to let his guard down anytime soon.

Scofield flicked his eyes up quickly to meet Alex's when Alex spoke of dignity. If he was busily turning over in his mind different things that could make Alex break that thoroughly, then Alex swore that he was going to kick Scofield right in the gut and consequences be damned. It was not as if he was not neck-deep in consequences and barely treading water as it was.

"You do," Scofield said matter of factly before he leaned forward and into the backseat. Alex was so surprised that that he did not resist when he felt Scofield's hand enter the back pocket of his slacks and draw out his wallet.

"And here I thought that you faked the bank robbery," he said sourly as he watched Scofield pull out the considerable amount of cash that he carried on him. As Scofield briefly considered each of the credit cards in turn before he shoved them back, he added, "Give the cards a whirl. You could probably get more out of them, and they wouldn't be able to trace the purchases until you were already over the border." A blatant lie, but one never knew what would stick and what would not.

Scofield's only response was a soft smile, as if they both knew that Alex was capable of better than that. 'You're too frightened to remember that you used to be a good man.' Alex stiffened, remembering, and would have pulled back further against the seat if he had not caught himself in the nick of time.

"I don't want them to think that you were helping us voluntarily," Scofield finally replied.

Alex was beginning to think that Scofield said such things solely so that Alex would be so surprised that he would remain still and not fight as Scofield touched him. His fingers brushed against Alex as he put the wallet back where he had found it and then leaned back out of the car again. His expression was inscrutable as he said to Tancredi, "Be careful."

Alex's head was beginning to ache and his hands to shake. He needed another dose of his pills at the exact time that he would be damned before he asked. Alex noticed that Sara only nodded, and that her expression was troubled as she watched Scofield exit the car. He wished, watching Scofield walk away himself, that they had pushed the issue of the tattoos harder with the local media. The reasoning had been that any man who was smart enough to break out of a maximum security prison using little more than the resources within his own head would not be so foolish as to put his very distinctive body out on display. It would then figure that the escaped prisoner who could think around more corners than any other that Alex had ever encountered before in his life would turn the other way and put them on display.

Tancredi waited until Scofield had disappeared around the corner before she twisted in her seat again so that she could study Alex without speaking. She was a doctor, he remembered, though the way that she was sweeping her eyes across him from his head down to his knees was more akin to that of a scientist who would much rather study him under glass. "How's your head?" she asked.

Throbbing like a tooth that needed to be pulled out by the roots, but she did not need to know that. "How's yours?" What had once been a red mark had since darkened into an ugly stripe stretching from across her forehead. Small wonder that Scofield had chosen to go out into public even though his tattoos were showing. While he was still taking a risk, Tancredi would be immediately stopped and asked who had mugged her.

Tancredi's only immediate response was a small, Mona Lisa smile. As she continued to watch Alex, he became very aware of how the dried blood on his face was beginning to itch. "Those could use stitches," Tancredi said, nodding towards the places were Scofield had split Alex's face open with the cuffs. She winched and touched at her head as she did so, and Alex realized that, no matter how articulately she was managing to converse with him now, the only way that she didn't have a concussion was if she had a head of solid granite. Alex began surreptitiously testing the cuffs behind him, wondering if Scofield had left the keys with Tancredi on the off chance that an emergency would arise and he would have to be unlocked.

"Fine," Alex said. "Drop me off at a hospital, I'll get myself patched right up."

"You're going to scar either way," Tancredi said, for a few seconds longer wearing that puzzling smile. She had the same way of staring at people that Scofield did. "I can clean them up with butterfly bandages and alcohol. The marks won't be any bigger." She dropped her eyes to Alex's shoulders, which were moving slightly as he continued to test the cuffs and ignore the pain that rose from his wrists as he did so. "I still have a gun," she said softly. Alex did not hear any threat in her quiet and nearly gentle inflection. That did not mean anything, as Kellerman himself sounded like quite the gentleman most of the time. Recognizing that this was not the way that the world worked did not mean that Alex was going to stop wishing that it was, even as he realized that his days as an agent of order were long done.

"What are the odds that you'll actually fire it?" Alex continued to struggle against the cuffs, more for show than anything else. He was under no illusions that the properties of steel were suddenly going to change because he was feeling appropriately stubborn, but he had not missed the concerned way that Tancredi had been watching the damage that he was doing to his own wrists earlier. If he could only lure her towards the backseat…

"Michael thinks that you're a good man," Tancredi said in that same soft and nearly contemplative tone of voice. If she was feeling any doctorly inclinations towards coming into the backseat and stopping him from injuring himself further, then she was doing an admirable job of keeping them hidden.

Alex was surprised enough to cease his struggling, but only for a second. He barked out a short and bitter laugh. "You paramour has shown questionable judgment in a great many areas, Dr. Tancredi."

The paramour comment was meant to throw Tancredi off of the trail, but she only blinked at him for a moment or two before she subjected him to that steady stare again. Alex could not shake the feeling that she had gained more points off of him than he had off of her. "When I still worked at Fox River," she began, "I got used to seeing men who could never be called 'good' on their best day. Every once in a while, I still met one who could surprise me. They gave me hope."

"If you're going to sing to me of Scofield's virtues," Alex said back to her dryly, "then as a gentleman, I feel I should warn you that you're wasting your time." The only response was a slight narrowing of Tancredi's eyes.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," she told him. "One of the men that I thought was a good man had just had a knee surgery. I treated him, he flirted with me, I thought that he was harmless. An hour later he tried to rape and murder me." There was a soft clicking noise from the front seat and the hand that Alex could not see. "The safety is off of the gun. If you're doing that so that I will go back there and stop you, then you might as well stop. Save yourself the blood."

Alex paused and stared at her. Another one of those laughs was bubbling up again, the ones that hurt his throat. "Forgive me for saying so, Dr. Tancredi," he told her, "but when I think of the kind of woman who could help a convict escape prison because he asked nicely, you are not the one who immediately springs to mind."

One corner of Tancredi's mouth quirked upwards. Under different circumstances, Alex thought that he might even have gotten a full smile out of her. "Michael has convinced me that he's a good man," she said. "So has Lincoln. The jury is still out on you."

Alex leaned back against his seat and ignored the way that putting weight back onto his wrists made them hurt. He had a mind that he was smiling at Tancredi. With the strange way that his face hurt, he could not be sure. He was certain that it was not a pleasant one. "Michael Scofield knows a great many things," Alex said. "He does not know everything."

Something flickered in Tancredi's eyes, gone before it could be measured and quantified. "I am well aware of that."

Scofield returned then, walking back around the corner in a gait that was far too loose and casual for it possibly be uncalculated. He had bought a cheap jacket with some of the money that he had taken from Alex and a baseball cap as well, so that the tattoos were covered beneath canvas and his eyes were shrouded in shadow. His eyes were the most visible part of his face as he strode quickly back to the car and got into the front seat; for the first time, Alex realized how far the evening had gained ground on the day.

'Lock the doors, Pam,' he thought, tallying up all of the hours that he had been gone and all of the conversations that he could imagine taking place between blank-faced men. 'Get one of those instincts that I teased you about, got to the movies, take Cam to visit a friend. Don't be home tonight.' The urge to have another fit was very strong, and would not yield easily to bloody-minded rationality.

Alex met Scofield's eyes again in the rearview mirror, took a breath, looked away. When he gathered himself enough to look back again, Scofield was touching Tancredi's arm in a warm, familiar way that still made her twitch. He handed her the bag that he had been carrying with him. None of the three of them acknowledged that the twitch had happened at all. "Everything that you need?"

Tancredi opened the bag and gave it a kind of sweeping, clinical glance that let Alex know immediately that she was looking at medical supplies. "Yes," she said before she looked up and gave Scofield the long, slow smile that she had kept hidden from Alex while they had been speaking. It was enough to make Alex feel as if he was intruding upon an intimate moment, but still he did not turn his eyes away. The people who were keeping him captive did not have the right to demand privacy from him.

Tancredi caught Alex's eye and, smothering a small cough, turned her head away. Alex thought that he saw a blush creeping up her neck, as if she was embarrassed to have given Scofield that smile in the first place. "We need to talk," she told Scofield in a voice that was clearly meant for the two of them alone. That was not even remotely possible in the closed confines of the car, but Alex thought it was cute that she tried.

Scofield glanced one more time at Alex in the rearview mirror before he said, "I know." Alex leaned back against the seat and sighed as he continued his litany of prayers for Pam, for Cameron. He had not even been of age when he had left the Church, save for the day that he had married Pam, but that was seeming like a worse mistake by the day. Atheists and foxholes, all of that.

Scofield put the car into gear and eased them slowly from the alleyway and back into the sparse flow of traffic. It was twilight now and deepening rapidly towards full dark, but Alex still straightened and immediately began taking in as much as he could. Someone named Mahill owned a flower shop that desperately needed better shrubs lining its front walk, and he was in a town called Edgeworth. As close as Gila already was to the border, Alex could only figure that Scofield and Tancredi had not felt comfortable spending another night in a town that was undoubtedly swarming with federal agents by now. At least one of those details could be useful to Alex, if he kept his head and put it to judicious use when the opportunity arose. He certainly had the motivation for it.

Scofield pulled the car up to a motel that may very well have been inspired by the one that all three of them had left earlier. Alex could not stop himself from making a faint scoffing noise. "Four star draws attention," was all that Scofield said before he slid from the car and walked towards the office, pulling his hat down low over his eyes. Given the very public standoff that Scofield and Tancredi had had only a few hours before, Alex supposed that he could hope that a fortuitous news bulletin could flash across the screen and the clerk would be even half awake, but given the abject failure of the news bulletins thus far he wasn't going to put money on it.

As soon as Scofield left the car, there came that quiet click from the front seat again. Looking out the window at the shadows as they grew longer and more capable of hiding all number of crimes, Alex could not stop his mouth from curving into a small smile. He was not certain that he was operating on anything other than autopilot now. "Jury's still out?" he asked her without looking around.

In the front seat, Tancredi shifted her weight back and forth before she answered, "You're not really a talker. I haven't seen anything to change my mind one way or the other."

Alex made a soft sound that Sara could have interpreted as laughter if she had so chosen. Scofield chose that moment to return, opening the driver's door long enough so that he could toss the key to Tancredi before he circled back around to Alex's door. "Come on," he said as he opened it and gestured with the gun for Alex to get out. God bless those shadows and the general inattention of the American public, Alex thought dryly as he complied. The blood at his wrists was a heavy crust that flaked when he moved.

"Was this a part of your plan?" Alex asked when he was standing before Scofield.

Scofield flashed him a look that Alex was delighted to be able to call bitchy before he responded, "Right from the beginning." He left the 'fuck you' implied. Alex immediately felt much better.

Scofield concealed the gun with his body as he stood behind Alex and walked him into the hotel room, which Tancredi entered first and helpfully left open for them. She walked straight into the bathroom without saying a word. As Alex took a seat on one of the beds, he could hear her turn on the faucet.

Scofield took a seat opposite Alex in the room's single chair, which was riddled with cigarette burns that he toyed with idly as he continued to watch Alex. He looked no more comfortable with a gun in his hand now than he had the first time that he had picked it up. Alex was in no mood for Scofield's alternate threats and moral pleas and turned his face away, watching what little that he could see of Tancredi's shadow as it moved to and for in the bathroom, but Scofield was not feeling inclined to obey social cues. "We'll leave for the border in the morning," he told Alex, always watching him with those impossible eyes. Alex felt as if Scofield was watching every move that he made from some clue, some hint as to why the puzzle before him was not fitting together as logic dictated that it ought. Alex was not sure which careless movement was going to be the betraying twitch that finally let Scofield's admirable mind figure it all out. He kept himself very still as a consequence.

"As soon as I'm sure that you'll no longer be able to interfere, I'll let you go," Scofield said as he continued to watch Alex closely. "You'll be free by noon tomorrow."

"Thanks for the itinerary." Alex closed his eyes as his head spiked and even the dim lights of the room became much too bright. He had to clench his hands into fists behind him in order to keep them from trembling, and he could feel his heart beating too fast against his ribcage. It wanted to escape, too. He nearly swore.

Even with his eyes closed, Alex could still tell that Scofield's gaze was on him. He could feel it against the side of his neck, a heat, and Alex absurdly thought that it was akin to the laser guide on a gun. The bullet should follow only a few seconds later.

"With luck," Scofield continued, "your bosses will believe you when you tell them that you came against your will." Ah, now there was the anger, there was the faint, edgy undertone, there was the man who had discovered earlier that he might be able to shoot someone, after all. Alex felt his lips curving in spite of himself. "What do they have on you, Agent Mahone? Or do you really expect me to believe that you would allow a woman to be tortured to death because you didn't want Shales to be discovered?" There was a terrible kindness that was creeping into Scofield's voice along with the curiosity, chasing the flash of fury away as if it had never been. There were a few seconds in which Alex thought that Scofield might tell him that, whatever it was that his masters were using to blackmail him and keep him on his leash, he, Tancredi, and whatever merry band of convicts that he had picked up along the way could help. If that happened, Alex decided, then he was going to have no choice but to throw himself at Scofield, gun and cuffs be damned.

"What makes you so sure that I'm being blackmailed?" Alex asked. He struggled hard to keep the fatigue out of his voice. They just kept having the same conversations over and over again, circling one another. "Could it be that I'm doing all of this just because I want to?" He opened his eyes at last to find that Scofield was still staring at him. Alex was not surprised.

Scofield moved his eyes across Alex's entire body, as if there would be some physical stamp of Alex's allegiance on the flesh that Scofield would then be able to read as easily as his blueprints. Alex twitched irritably under the stare but did not look away.

"No," Scofield said finally.

Alex snorted and was saved from answering by Tancredi emerging from the bathroom with the bag that Scofield had brought her still in hand. She had cleaned up the cut on her head and then pulled it closed with three neat butterfly bandages in a row. Even closed, it was unpleasant to look upon, and Alex thought that he was not the only one who would have been well-served by a trip to the hospital. She paused for a moment when she saw Alex and Scofield and felt the tension in the air before she gave herself a visible shake and came forward. Alex saw that she was carrying a dampened motel towel in her hand, spotted her and there with her blood.

"Your turn," she said to Alex as she took a seat next to him on the bed. Scofield tensed to see Tancredi so close to Alex, given what Alex had just said, but he made no effort to intervene. It was almost enough to make Alex want to try something based upon that alone.

Tancredi touched the dampened towel to Alex's face, cleaning away the blood that had been allowed to dry there. It was not until he saw the redness spreading across the cloth that Alex realized precisely how much there was. It was an even greater miracle that Scofield and Tancredi had accomplished all that they had over the past several hours, given that two of the three of them looked like refugees from a slasher film. Alex was no stranger to a general frustration with the American people's inability to pay attention to I anything /I , but it was nice to know that there were some aspects of himself that had still not become altered and corroded.

"This is going to hurt," Tancredi warned him as she pulled a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the bag, doused one end of the towel with it, and then held it to the first of the cuts on his face, muttering, "Sorry," when he stiffened. She cleaned each of the cuts with a gentle efficiency before she pulled them closed with the butterfly bandages. "Okay, now turn around so that I can see your wrists."

"It would be much easier if you took the cuffs off," Alex said as he complied.

"The jury's hung. The judge is starting to get ticked off at them," Tancredi replied as she pushed the handcuffs higher up on his forearms. Scofield had not tightened them as much as he ought to have. Alex supposed that he ought to be glad that Scofield did not have more experience in the taking of prisoners. Scofield, thankfully, had given up on his moral assault, for he remained silent as Alex twisted around to face him. There were circles appearing in the skin beneath Scofield's eyes, and he flicked his gaze over Alex's shoulder and at Tancredi as she let out a soft gasp.

"You were struggling hard," she said.

Alex made a soft snorting sound and did not break his eye contact with Scofield even while Tancredi was pouring the rubbing alcohol over his wrists. "Didn't seem like a time to go halfway," he said, and then turned his face away from the window and winced as a truck rumbled by outside and sent a bolt of light through the window. Scofield, goddamn him, saw everything.

Tancredi made a noncommittal noise and went on with her work, cleaning up his wrists with the same brisk, careful competency that she had used on his face. Alex kept his hands bound into their fists as Tancredi began to slather some kind of salve onto his skin, so that she would not see the trembling turn into an outright shake, but he still thought that he could feel her hands pause for a moment. She went back to winding gauze around his wrists while Alex closed his eyes again and told himself that if he had gotten this fact and dealt with the very real danger to Cameron and Pam without flinching, save for that one moment of coming unglued, then he could surely go another fourteen hours or so without his pills. Tallied up like that, the number seemed enormous, but he had gone longer than that. They had not been pleasant hours, but Alex was already committed to the next several hours being generally unpleasant.

Alex felt Tancredi's fingers come to a place on his forearm just above the bandage as she finished up and realized with a flash that she was taking his pulse. He spun back towards her with a snarl already fixed onto his face, never mind his earlier assertion to himself that the best way to turn this situation around would be to stay calm. Tancredi jerked backwards and off of the bed with an admirable speed while Scofield rose swiftly to his feet, the gun in hand. Alex ignored Scofield altogether and focused on Tancredi's wide, frightened eyes instead, wondering if he was pushing that jury closer towards making their decision. Scofield would shoot him or he would not, but so long as he was being held in suspension in a dingy motel room with no idea what might or might not be happening in Colorado and no way to influence it in any case, he did not see that it mattered one way or the other. "What do you think you're doing?" he snarled at her.

Tancredi's eyes were still wide, but she answered calmly, "I was checking your pulse. It's racing." She paused before she added, "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Alex gritted before he swung his legs up onto the bed and lay down, ignoring Scofield and Tancredi both. If he closed his eyes, the headache might lessen. If he focused hard, he might be able to shake away the fact that his lack of medication made him want to tremble all over. If he wanted it enough, then Alex would still be able to catch Scofield in a mistake.

Alex had no doubt that he wanted it badly enough.

End Part Four


	5. Chapter 5

Part Five

Sara drew back further from the bed as Agent Mahone stretched out across it as if he might even sleep, while her heart was still beating at a bird's pace from the way that he had yelled at her. She cast a glance towards Michael, who was looking at little wide-eyed himself. The savagery in Agent Mahone's voice had been almost as thick as it had been while had thrown his prolonged fit in the car earlier.

'Jury's closer to a decision now,' Sara thought as she backed away from the bed even further. Watching a moment longer until she was sure that Agent Mahone was determined to continue ignoring her as long as she was going to continue standing there, she stepped quickly around the bed and towards Michael. The gun looked awkward and unnatural in his hands, and Sara did not like it.

"That was unexpected," Sara said in a low voice as she and Michael retreated by a mutual unspoken agreement to the bathroom doorway. Her midsection twinged and she touched at it, wincing. She had taken a heavy dose of aspirin while she had been cleaning herself up, but it had yet to take effect.

Michael frowned at her. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah." Sara took a deep breath before deciding that it was a mistake. "Some bruised ribs, I think."

Michael eyed her with a tenderness that seemed strange, coming from a man who was holding a gun. Sara rebuked herself a bare second later for this thought, as several of the guards at Fox River who were not associated too closely with Bellick were very nice people, but none of them were able to make her shiver like Michael could with a glance.

Sara fought back that shiver and told herself that she had left in the first place to get away from that kind of effect that he had on her, before she remembered that she had also been preparing to go back when Lance-slash-Kellerman had caught up to her.

"Do you need to be seen at a hospital?" Michael asked her. Sara wanted to point out that this would be one of the very most foolish things that they could possibly do, as if Michael himself did not already know that himself. He was willing to do it, anyway.

"No," Sara said swiftly, and added when Michael gave her a look, "They're only bruised. If we can keep the high-speed pyrotechnics to a minimum for a while I should be fine." That was far more a vain hope than it was a realistic assessment of reality, Sara thought as she watched Michael peek around the corner to make certain that Agent Mahone was still where they had left him. She was not sure that she could take many more days that included high-speed chases, a car crash, a gun standoff, and then the kidnapping of a federal agent.

Michael ducked back around the corner and flashed her a quick smile. "I'll try to keep things sedate." He seemed so genuinely happy to have her there with him, in spite of the danger and the blood and the very real crimes that the both of them had committed, justified or not, that Sara could not help letting the air out of her lungs on a shaky sigh. He was not in any way going to be pleased by what she had to say next, then.

"Michael, when this…Agent Kellerman found me, I was coming back," she began. Michael had been peeking around the corner again so that he could check on the very largest of the crimes that they had committed that day. He jerked his head back towards her, his eyes first lighting up and then becoming wary and dark only a second later. Her tone had not been that of a woman finally agreeing to run off on a romantic getaway, which Sara was convinced that a significant part of Michael still thought that the Panama plan would be. That was a part of the problem. "But I wasn't coming back to tell you that I would go with you."

"Oh." Though Michael leaned away from her by scarcely more than an inch, it felt much larger. Sara was reminded of how they had stared at each other over the hood of Michael's car earlier that day, where feet had become miles.

Much as Sara hated that distance, neither was she going to allow it to deter her from what needed to be said. "Panama's not a plan, Michael," she said. The slight flicker of his eyes was the only betrayal of emotion that he gave. Sara had known even at Fox River that she hated his ability to do that. She fought down the urge to wrap her arms around herself and went on, "These guys are killing people, Michael. They killed my father. They'll kill anyone else who tries to stand against them, or even the ones who are just inconvenient and in the way. How can we possibly run away and let them just keep doing that?"

Michael made a soft huffing sound. "That's not an argument for staying," he told her. There was a far-away light in his eyes that let Sara know that he was thinking of his brother and the rendezvous point, and about more than merely the mechanics of making the next day work. Faced with a whole nation of potential dead bodies, Michael would still ask first how this was going to affect Lincoln.

Protect Lincoln, Sara figured, and maybe now he would protect her with the same zeal, which was a thought so looming and awesome that Sara was still not entirely sure what she was supposed to do about it.

"It does when you realize how many people will die if we leave," Sara countered in a soft, level voice. It was I right /I that they stay and fight, she realized, right in a way that had nothing to do with how legal or illegal the action might be. She could still remember the sick sense of vertigo that had overcome her after she had unlocked the infirmary door and realized that she had done something that could not be considered legal under any stretch of the law at the same time that she could not convince herself that she had done anything wrong. Sara's history of differentiating what was moral or immoral independent of what was legal was not so great. She didn't have any such uncertainty in her gut right now. Call it progress, or maybe there was a still a far-down part of herself that was still getting a little too much of a kick out of running around and pretending to be Bonnie.

Michael peeked around the corner again. Unless Agent Mahone had the ability to teleport-though given the eerie way in which he had stalked them to the meeting place and then the motel, Sara was also not sure that she was willing to discount it-then Michael was doing it in order to give himself a break from having to look at her. "I have to get my brother someplace safe before I even think about doing anything else," he told her. "I'm sorry, but I have to."

Deflated, Sara nodded. "I understand," she said, feeling terrible because she thought that a part of her did. Worse, she realized as she saw the way that Michael was looking at her now, Michael thought that she was staying only because the other options were so much worse. He touched lightly at her shoulder, forcing Sara to fight down another of those shivers. Touch had always been alternately a comfort and a tool for manipulation between them, and the cynical part of Sara was not sure which one of them she was experiencing now. She listened to the rumble of voices as Michael and Agent Mahone spoke to one another without being able to discern the words, sighed, and closed her eyes. The urge to either shoot up or take a drink was stronger than it had been in months, even on the night when she had let Michael and all of the others out of the prison, and took a long time to subside. Sara balled her hands into fists and counted it as a victory when it finally did.

---

Sara was not sure that anyone slept that night. Agent Mahone was steadfastly ignoring everyone, a tactic that Sara would call fundamentally childish if she was not convinced that there was much more going on beneath the surface, with no way of knowing if he genuinely slept at any point or merely feigned it. Sara herself would not have thought it possible to sleep while surrounded by people who at best had no problem hauling her around like luggage and, for all that Agent Mahone knew, if push came to shove might not have a problem killing him at all. She did not think that it would be even possible for herself to sleep, no matter how exhausted she was from all of the grieving and running that she had done over the past few days. Even the moments when she fell into a light doze startled her as soon as she inevitably woke a few moments later. Every time that she did, it was to find Michael's eyes on her.

By the time that the dawn had come around, the few scattered moments of rest that she had been able to collect had done her so little good that Sara rather crankily thought that she might have done better off not sleeping at all. She swung her legs over the side of the bed that she had commandeered and noticed that Agent Mahone had woken up, or at the very least was seeing fit to act as if he was awake now, and was watching her. Even though his face was smooth and blank of any emotion that might have allowed the person watching him to gain a handhold, Sara could not shake the feeling that she was being assessed for some kind of future purpose.

It was eerie, that stare, and the very eeriness of it spurred Sara to realize that Agent Mahone's eyes were nearly the same shade of blue as Michael's. She lifted her chin and stared back with the same cool lack of expression, assessing him through a doctor's eyes and trying not to wonder too strongly about what framework he was applying in his assessment of her. The trembling had stopped, Sara began to think, until she noticed the rigid way that he was holding his arms fixed behind him, many miles beyond what the cuffs themselves demanded, and realized that this was as not the case at all. He was merely taking pains to keep it hidden after he had reacted so badly to Sara's simple examination the night before. Control, or the appearance of control, was of the utmost importance to him. Noticing this, Sara added it to the mental dossier that she was creating on the man that they were keeping as their temporary prisoner before she went on with her visual examination. Sara was sure that Michael would be amused to know that she was capable of standing back and taking the measure of a person from all angles as he was, and perhaps better. She, after all, was still in possession of all of her toes. It was necessary in a prison to immediately take stock of all of the threats that surrounded her. Sara had only been wrong three times in the past three yeas. One was the man that she had described to Agent Mahone, the one who had turned around and in under fifteen minutes had gone from friendly and charming into hell-bent upon raping and murdering her. The second man was Agent Kellerman. The third, and the person whom Sara had allowed to blindside her to the largest and most traumatic degree, was sitting in the chair on the opposite side of the room.

Sara could not stop her gaze from turning for a second or two in the direction of Michael as she thought of this. Agent Mahone had made note of the movement when she turned back towards him. Sara was sure that her eyes betrayed an irritated flicker before she was able to pull her expression back under control again, but she pushed forward without acknowledging it. Agent Mahone had stopped sweating the way that he had been the night before, at least, and Sara severely doubted that that was a physiological reaction that the could fake, no matter how anal retentive he actually was. There were dark circles beneath his eyes that Sara was sure that all three of them were sharing at this point, and the same symptoms of headache that he had been displaying the night before. Twice Sara watched him turning his face away from the light that was crawling through the window and the soft glow that was emanating from the bedside lamp as if it hurt him. Sara watched all of this and could not help but feel a stirring of concern, whether it was a pure doctor's instinct or a sense shared with Michael that something was not quite adding up here.

Michael startled Sara in her examination by standing up abruptly from his chair, causing her to jump before she could get control of herself again. So, she noticed, did Agent Mahone, even if his was markedly less pronounced. Sara did not think that she would have seen it at all if not for those circles.

"I'm going to get some coffee, some food," he told Sara in a low voice as he walked over to the bed and handed her the gun that had been Agent Kellerman's. It was on the tip of Sara's tongue to tell Michael that it was not worth the risk until she remembered that she had eaten nothing since the previous morning and had no way of knowing when the other two had eaten at all. Sara touched at her forehead and winched when she felt the long bruise that had grown even more tender over the night.

"Maybe I could wear your hat," she suggested.

Michael eyed her for a moment before he shook his head and said decisively, "No, I don't think that that's a good idea."

The look on Michael's face was such that, in spite of everything, it was all that Sara could do not to smother a laugh against the back of her hand. It was possible, she thought, that nerves were finally catching up to her. "I look that bad?" she asked.

A faint smile touched the edges of Michael's mouth. "I've learned not to respond when a woman asks that question," he said. Sara did not know if he was genuinely putting their conversation from the night before out of his mind or merely pretending that he had, but he touched at her cheek as he handed off the weapon. "Safety off."

"Safety off," Sara echoed as she sat back down on the bed with the gun that she was still not sure she could bring herself to use. It was only important that Agent Mahone believed that she could use it, she reminded herself, choosing to ignore for the moment that she had been a terrible liar ever since she was a child. She watched as Michael slipped out the door before she looked back to Agent Mahone and sighed. "Do I really look that bad?" Sara winced and squirmed as she realized that it really was that bad. As much as she knew by now that she and the wide world of opiates had too much bad blood between them to ever be considered friends, she could not help but wish that she had access to something stronger than aspirin.

Agent Mahone looked first startled that he was being addressed at all, then by the fact that Sara was using such a silly question to do it. "You're like a department store mannequin, Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone said in a dry voice, quirking his eyebrow slightly before he turned his head so that he could watch the light playing in around the cheap motel curtains. Sara thought that there was a defiance in the gesture, as if he knew that it was going to hurt him but needed to show that he could take it all the same. There were lines drawn into the flesh around his eyes.

"Do you have a physical condition that I should be aware of?" Sara asked. Agent Mahone snapped his head around towards her, too fast; Sara could see the barely controllable wince in the way that his mouth tightened. Having experienced far more than her share of hangovers in college before she had discovered that there were other, better drugs, Sara could sympathize. It did not, however, change her original point. "If you do, I need to know. I could help-"

"Could you now, Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone interrupted her in a low, silken voice that made all of the hair on the back of Sara's neck and along her arms stand up. She had not known that human speech could have that kind of power. "Why would you want to do that?"

"I'm a doctor," Sara said, pleased to note that the moment of purely visceral fear that she had experienced was not entering her voice. Whether or not it was showing in her face, with the way that Agent Mahone's eyes were so efficiently following her every move as if he, too, was working out a puzzle whose ultimate shape was just starting to be know she could not say. "I don't like to see people in pain."

"You've kidnapped someone," Agent Mahone countered in that dry, dry voice. Sara was convinced that a small and perverse part of him was enjoying this, and that man was quite a different one from the man that she and Michael had encountered so far. "A federal crime. I'd say whether or not I experience any mild discomfort is the least of your worries."

Sara felt one of her eyebrows quirk up. "I'd say that whether or not I'm committing a federal crime is I also /I the least of my worries," she said, mimicking Agent Mahone's tone. He looked startled and even, in that small and perverse part of himself that was still good, amused. "Your pulse was racing when I took it yesterday, and you were displaying both headache symptoms and trouble focusing. You're either in withdrawal to something or having an anxiety attack." Sara cocked her head to one side so that she could stare at him until he began to show the first signs of being discomfited by it. "And you're not much better this morning."

The man whom she had glimpsed for a moment and who had been so much more interesting was banished by a flickering of Agent Mahone's eye. He took a deliberate glance at the dingy bedside clock. Seven a.m. "Try to keep your better instincts under control for the next five hours, Dr. Tancredi," he told her. "They're not good traits for a fugitive and novice Bonnie to possess."

Sara felt a high flush of blood entering her cheeks, as the words had been intended to make her angry, and then tilted her head to one side. She had heard something else buried within them as well. "I don't imagine that they're too wise for a mercenary to carry around, either," she answered coolly. The gun was heavy and her palms were slick with a nervous sweat, so that she was afraid that she was going to drop it. Sara set the gun to the side on the bedspread so that she could scrub her palms off quickly against her jeans. Agent Mahone followed every move that she made with her eyes. She really hoped that he didn't think that she was missing that.

Agent Mahone indulged in a slight roll of his eyes. "At least you're not convinced that I'm being blackmailed," he said. He looked towards the window again. Sara wondered why he kept doing that, even though it was clearly hurting him.

"I didn't say that you weren't being blackmailed," Sara said. He turned back to look at her, the subtle change in his expression saying that, for the first time, she was becoming interesting. "It doesn't stop you from being a mercenary. After all, you're still making an exchange for your soul. I don't really care what your price was." Sara could hear the edge in her voice and knew that it was not entirely reserved for Agent Mahone. She didn't care, either, because Michael was not there and she was getting the feeling that the two of them were so similar that yelling at one could stand in for yelling at the other in a pinch. Michael's price was Lincoln, and the consequence was everyone else that the president would kill as a result. Even as Sara knew that this was wrong, she could not be sure that she would not make the same decision in that position, if the price was high enough. Sara had not been given the time to grieve for her father with the way that crises had started to fall one after the other like dominoes, but it was a sharp ache in the center of her chest every time that she paused and allowed herself to think about it. "You're still trading everyone else in the country for one stupid person." Sara was honestly not sure if she was talking to Agent Mahone at that point, to the phantom of Michael who was not there, or even to the part of herself who would trade the nation for her father in a second.

Agent Mahone had rolled his eyes and made no attempt to hide it when Sara had accused him of selling his soul, only to go very still and focused by the time that she had finished. Sara was aware that her blood was high in her cheeks and that she was breathing harder than she had been at the start, but Agent Mahone for once was not watching every twitch as if he was waiting for the point when he turn it to his advantage. He looked more instead as if he was visiting some inner world all his own, and that he was not having a pleasant journey in the going there.

"Would you really have killed me?" Sara asked him. Still riding high on anger and grief that couldn't find a safe place to find a voice, the words emerged ragged and savage.

Agent Mahone leaned back as he returned from that inner landscape, but he did not seem surprised. "Yes, I would have," he told her, watching her face carefully. "Does that give you enough for your jury to finally make a decision?"

"Yes," Sara told him before she scooped the gun back into her hand, stood from the bed, and stalked off towards the bathroom. She turned on the water, thinking that she was going to cry, and instead stood with a bowed head and dry, burning eyes. Sara could not scream at Michael and was not sure that she could even scream at Agent Mahone, not when the temptation to make the same choice was so great, and she could not scream at her father for making such a stupid alliance in the first place. There was no point in raging against the dead.

Sara thought that she might give it a good try all the same, but she settled for bringing the butt of the gun down against the counter once, hard enough to crack the plastic before she decided that enough was enough. She set the gun to the side long enough to cup her hands beneath the faucet and gulp down several palms full of water, splash a few more across her face. A few moments of scouting turned up a mug that was covered with dust but would still do. Sara rinsed it out and filled it with water before she reclaimed the weapon that she hardly knew how to use and stalked back into the main room.

"Here," she said shortly, thrusting the mug out towards Agent Mahone's mouth. When he only looked at her, Sara went on, "Five hours of dehydration still won't be pleasant. I want to keep my better instincts."

"Of course," Agent Mahone said before he tipped his mouth to the cup and began to drink. Sara set the mug down on the nightstand once he had finished and reclaimed her seat on the opposite bed. He probably needed to relieve himself, as well, but Sara was not about to negotiate that arrangement with him. Better instincts did not mean that she had to be foolish.

Agent Mahone did not try to speak to her any further as they waited for Michael to return. Sara doubted that this was a kindness; more likely than not he merely saw in her face that she was going to be an unresponsive conversationalist. Though it surely too no more than ten minutes longer than that for Michael to come back, Sara still stared at him as he slid through the door as if he had been gone for years and she needed to memorize the contours of his face all over again.

She would have made the same choice, if it had been her father's life. That still did not make it right. Sara sighed.

Michael caught the noise and looked up from where he and Agent Mahone had been mutely studying each other. He was carrying a tray of coffees and a bag that smelled unmistakably and tantalizingly of grease, both of which he set down on the dresser before he asked, "Everything go all right?"

"Fine." The sweat was slicking her palms again. Sara ignored it. Putting the safety back onto the gun, she rose to her feet and went to help Michael unload the food. Leaning close so that they would have some semblance of privacy, Sara murmured, "We still need to talk. About Panama."

Michael's sidelong glance was surprised and even, Sara thought, the smallest bit hurt. "I have to get my brother to safety."

'But what about _you_?' Sara wanted to ask, for she had yet to see Michael even hint that this was one of his concerns, until she realized that her plan was hardly one that was going to be promoting anyone's safety, either. "Michael-" she started.

"Later," he said, stepping away from her and pulling the key to the handcuffs from the pocket of his jacket as he did so. Unless she wanted to turn a private conversation into a public one, Sara had no choice but to fall silent. She did so, even finding room within herself to fume a little and swear that Michael had done that on purpose. Sara could have happily kicked him in the shins.

"There aren't any windows in the bathroom," Michael told Agent Mahone as he first unlocked the cuffs and then stood back cautiously. Nonetheless, a look still crossed Agent Mahone's face as if he was considering attacking Michael right then and there. At the moment, Sara was not sure which one of them she would even root for. "Or anything that can be used as a weapon."

Agent Mahone quirked one of his eyebrows up for a moment, as if he was asking what Michael really thought he was doing playing this role when they both knew that it didn't suit him, before he disappeared into the bathroom. Sara watched him go and didn't relax even when she heard the sound of water running. "He isn't trying very hard," she mused.

"How do you mean?" Michael asked, taking one of the cups of coffee and pulling a long swallow from it. It was nice to know that he was still human and thus incapable of running for days on end without suffering the ill effects of it. Frankly, Sara had been starting to wonder.

Sara paused before answering so that she could look, really look and not merely glance over, this man that she had committed herself to go on the run with across countries and continents. She still, running over the list of ways that he had used her in order to get Lincoln out and the way that he was exhibiting such frustrating tunnel vision now, thought that she could punch him right in the kidneys, but neither was she feeling the urge to run out the door. Sara thought that only a comparatively small portion of this had to do with the daring, dangerous, and incredibly chivalrous rescue that he had performed. She sighed before she said, "You would think that Agent Mahone would by trying a little harder to get one over on us," she said. "Being a prisoner? Not fun." Her short trip under Agent Kellerman's authority certainly had not been. A few seconds later, Sara realized what she had said and flushed. "Though I guess you already knew that."

Michael's smile was soft and warm. In the tangled, buzzing mess of emotions that Sara was still trying to sort out, she found room to wish that he would do it more often. "I know what you meant." He glanced towards the bathroom, the smile being replaced by a troubled frown. "He's looking for an excuse."

'No,' Sara could not stop herself from thinking, remembering the man who had fought in the backseat the day before and then snarled at her so fiercely a few hours later that she had been certain that he was going to attack her, handcuffs or not. 'He's looking for an opening.' Before she could voice that thought, the bathroom door opened and Agent Mahone emerged. He had cleaned off the few traces of blood that Sara had missed on his face and on his arms and hands, though he had had to take off his suit jacket in order to do it. The sleeves of Agent Mahone's shirt were rolled up to his elbows, revealing forearms corded over in lean, capable muscle and a light dusting of freckles. The bandages around each wrist made it look easily as if what he had really done the day before was try to commit suicide.

Sara took all of this in at a glance and then moved on, her gaze never probing any deeper than warranted by professional concern. It was not until she glanced over at Michael that she realized that his eyes had yet to leave Agent Mahone's, and that it was becoming a thing much more intense than Sara's had ever been. She shivered once and turned her face away, feeling the intruder on something that she had no right to be witnessing. When Sara finally realized that taking her eyes off of the man who had already spoken so easily of killing her and Michael both was perhaps not the wisest idea that she had had since going on the run. Sara watched Michael's face and saw only wariness there as Agent Mahone walked towards them both, still fussing with the sleeves of his shirt. There was blood dotting the fabric and ground beneath his nails, while the butterfly bandages that were holding the cuts on his face together only added to the calm, gleaming intelligence in his eyes rather than detracting from it.

'He's waiting for an opportunity,' Sara thought again as Agent Mahone reclaimed his seat on the edges of the spread his arms wide to show that he carried no weapon in his hands. "This well-behaved enough for you?" he asked Michael. There was a light shining in his eyes that made Sara think of prophets and revolutionaries. She might as well have not been there at all.

The corners of Michael's mouth twitched. "It'll do," he answered. He seemed to have momentarily forgotten that Sara was there, also, right when she most wanted to shout a warning and only managed to keep herself silent because she could not figure out what she would say, exactly, what she planned on shouting a warning _for_.

"I'm going to lock your hands in front of you," Michael began, reaching out and taking one of Agent Mahone's wrists in his hand. Agent Mahone allowed it. "And then-"

Sara's first thought was that she could not think of anything specific to warn Michael about because they needed to be wary of everything. The second thought was that Agent Mahone was so _fast_.

Sara saw the gleaming of the metal and heard the quiet clicking sound that it made when Michael fastened it around Agent Mahone's wrist. She saw that the agent's eyes had begun to gleam, also, and opened her mouth to finally give voice to that warning, but it was too late. Agent Mahone had jumped back up to his feet before Sara had a chance to say a word and dragged his wrist from Michael's grasp. Michael had been alert and paying attention to Agent Mahone should he try just such a thing, and Sara saw that in the end it did not matter. Neither she nor Michael were fighters born, the last six weeks for Michael and the last six days for Sara notwithstanding, while Agent Mahone had been doing this job for years. Decades, probably. He grabbed Michael by the throat and then whirled him around so that he was standing in front of Agent Mahone, the chain of the handcuffs pressed taut against Michael's neck. Michael tilted his head back as far as he was able and gagged when Agent Mahone responded only by increasing the pressure; Sara could see angry red marks rising up on Michael's skin where the chain was being pressed down into the flesh.

And Michael's gun had been resting beside her on the dresser the entire time, Sara realized. The entire time, and her hand had not so much as twitched towards grabbing it. If she and Michael thought that they were going to be the next Bonnie and Clyde until they made it down to Panama, then they had a learning curve that they needed to get caught up on.

Sara fumbled fro the gun and flicked the safety off before she swung it around to bear on Agent Mahone. The sight of the weapon was not making him nearly anxious enough for Sara's comfort. That could have been because he had Michael in front of him as a shield and knew full well that he was one of the last people on the planet that Sara would ever shoot. She didn't think so, though. She thought that it was here. Sara thought that Agent Mahone was looking at her and then very deliberately saying that he didn't think she had it in her to be a killer any more than Michael did.

"Put the weapon down, Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone confirmed her suspicion a bare second later. "That's a very dangerous thing to be carrying around if you do not intend to use it."

The light in Agent Mahone's eyes was feral even as his voice was smooth and self-assured. 'If you're still trying to convince that jury, don't worry. They've already made up their minds,' Sara thought as she raised the gun and aimed it at Agent Mahone's head. Her hand was trembling slightly; it did not translate down the barrel. "Don't assume that I won't use it," Sara said. Her voice sounded like that of a woman who was entirely in control of the situation, even if she herself did not feel like one. "Let him go."

With the chain snapped taut against his throat, Michael was getting just enough air to stay conscious. His eyes were beginning to go glassy and his lips were pulled back from his teeth as he struggled to hook his fingers beneath the chain and pull free of it. Michael drove one of his elbows into Agent Mahone's abdomen in the same way that Sara had seen him use in order to get the upper hand the day before, but either the oxygen deprivation had made Michael weaker or Agent Mahone was merely expecting it this time. He winced and made a soft sound as some of the air was expelled from his lungs, but that was all. The marks on Michael's necks were of such a vivid and angry red color that Sara could not see how they could avoid darkening into bruises later.

"Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone began, giving Sara a moment to marvel that he was continuing to address her with a title of respect at the same time that she was busily calling him every unsavory name that she could think of in English and a few other languages besides within the confines of her own head. "I think that we both know that if you were going to shoot me, then you already would have taken the numerous opportunities that you have had to do so. Put down the weapon, step back, or watch me strangle him right here."

Sara looked towards Michael for clues while her finger was shaking with indecision against the trigger. She saw no help coming from that quarter. Michael was clearly struggling just to breathe. Sara noted that his hands had begun to sag at the same time that she realized that the chain across his neck was shaking, and not because Michael was continuing to struggle fruitlessly against it.

Sara had been allowing the barrel of the gun to drift down towards the floor in her moment of uncertainty. It only took her a moment to raise it again. Agent Mahone's hands were trembling; the shaking in Sara's had already stopped. "So kill him," she said simply.

Michael paused struggling for only a second, the minimum time that it took for him to lock eyes with Sara. Sara did not dare send him any kind of overt message, not with the way that Agent Mahone was right there and staring at her as if she had just announced her intention to topple Caroline Reynolds from the presidency and run for the position herself, but she hoped that he understood. Surely the man who could break out of a maximum security prison with nothing more than his brain could put the pieces together.

The problem with that thesis was that, from what Michael had told her, Agent Mahone was easily of a comparable intelligence. He had the look of a wolf figuring out all of the lamb's tricks on his face.

"If you think that I won't kill him, Dr. Tancredi," Agent Mahone told her, punctuating his statement with a hard jerk against Michael's windpipe. Michael gagged and, rather than going limp as had probably been his intention, only began to struggle harder. He threw his weight to the side with enough force to make Agent Mahone drift a few steps closer to the dresser or else let go of Michael altogether. Sara hoped that her face was remaining as still and uncomprehending as she needed it to be.

"You may want to ask David Apolskis," Agent Mahone finished.

"I know that you'll kill him," Sara answered. "I know that you'll kill me, too." Agent Mahone's voice was commanding and in control, but his eyes belonged to a man on the verge of coming undone. They might as well have belonged to a different person. Sara wondered how she had missed it; she wondered if this was what Michael had seen all along. "But you want to kill us both at a distance. You want to shoot us, so that you can pretend that there isn't just as much blood on your hands." Sara's own hands were wanting to tremble again. She commanded them sharply that now was not the time. "If you want to kill us, you're going to have to do it up close. You don't get to hide from the bodies and the blood."

Sara had, perhaps naively, thought that she might even be getting somewhere until she said the last sentence. She knew the moment that the words were out of her mouth, the second that she saw Agent Mahone's face go closed-off and cold again, that she had miscalculated. "I don't hide from them, believe me," he informed her before he abruptly increased the pressure that he was putting on Michael's throat, so that the red marks grew that much deeper and uglier and Michael's chest began to jerk as he struggled to draw a breath.

Given one or the other, Sara didn't guess that there was any real choice to be had. She jerked her finger back on the trigger and felt bile surge up in her throat.

Michael jerked hard to the side again, pulling Agent Mahone along with him, less than a second before the boom of the gun going off shook the room. Agent Mahone's face twisted, and Sara could have cried as she realized that Michael's sudden movement had caused her to miss Agent Mahone by a margin so slim that he might even have felt the bullet go whistling past him. She raised the gun for another go before she realized what Michael was doing.

Both of his lurches, hidden beneath the guise of being the panicked, frenzied struggles of anyone discovering that oxygen had without warning become a precious resource, had really been about getting him closer to the dresser. He closed his hands around one of the remaining cups of coffee, flicked the lid off with his thumb, and then threw the coffee over his shoulder at Agent Mahone's face. Agent Mahone had to duck backwards to avoid being scalded, and as he did so his grip on the chain about Michael's neck began to loosen. Michael thrust his fingers beneath the chain without hesitation and jerked back hard against Agent Mahone. For a few seconds they were flush against one another, as if Sara did not already have the worst of all possible times to feel as if she was intruding upon a scene where she should not. Michael threw Agent Mahone off balance long enough to draw in a few deep breaths before he was seizing the gun from Sara's grasp. She was thrilled to let him take it.

Agent Mahone let out a laugh that sounded shaky and nearly amused as he backed away and put his hands into the air. Sara wrapped her arms around herself; it hurt to look at him for too long. "Might as well pull that trigger," he rasped at Michael. "It's the only thing that will stop me from hunting you."

Michael made a hissing noise as he exhaled from between clenched teeth. Sara thought that he might even be on the verge of frustrated tears. "Whatever they have on you," he spit at Agent Mahone in a voice that did not know whether it wanted to be angry, frustrated, or desperate. Sara glanced out the window and swore that she could hear the approach of sirens. "Whatever…" Michael's face cleared. "_Whoever_ they're using to blackmail you," he finished in the same voice that he would use to talk a jumper down from a ledge. Sara did not miss the shudder that ran down Agent Mahone's spine as he heard it. "You have to realize that they will never honor that promise. You know that much." Michael paused long enough for his face to light up with another one of those mental leaps. "Pam and Cameron, right. They know too much. They know too much, and you know it. You're selling your soul without even getting anything back for it."

Agent Mahone looked as if he wanted nothing more than to put his fist into Michael's face. "I wouldn't involve them in this," he said, but he was listening. Listening, and clearly believing what Michael. That still didn't seem to be taking him down from the brink of violence.

"Doesn't matter," Michael said smoothly. He was warming to his argument, Sara could see it, as he realized that there was something in Agent Mahone that was capable of listening at all. "You could, you might have. That will be enough."

Agent Mahone glared at Michael through slitted eyes, his entire body wound up in tension, before he said, "We go to Colorado. We get my family. You want me to stop hunting, those are my terms."

Michael blinked, as if he was stunned to get even that far, and nearly shook his head before he stopped himself. "My brother is waiting for us at the border," he said. "And as long as you stop hunting us, we don't need you-"

"Those are the terms," Agent Mahone repeated. He had a stubborn look in his eyes that reminded Sara much more of Michael than she cared for. "I'm replaceable." He was back to using a smooth tone that jarred against the expression on his face. Remembering how the situation had turned explosive the last time that he had done that, Sara shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "They can have someone else hunting you within the day." He looked on the verge of an anxiety attack. That was fair enough; Sara herself felt as if she was on the verge of one, and she was not even the one who had just essentially flipped her moral compass around to point in an entirely new direction. "And they'll hunt you to the ends of the earth." Agent Mahone's smile was thin, colorless. The glance that he slid over Sara was, she was certain, quite deliberate as he said, "You want to sell your soul, too, I suggest that you make it worth something."

Michael stared at Agent Mahone for a long, long moment, until Sara was sure that she was not imagining the sound of approaching sirens. That stupid gunshot. Even in this fleabag motel, some things could not be done without attracting attention. Surely Michael was going to argue, Sara thought. If she had not been able to convince him to stand and fight rather than running away to Panama, then surely the man who had professed allegiance to the other side a mere sixty seconds before would not be able to do it. Michael turned a glance towards the window as he thought.

_Surely_. Sara looked back and forth between Michael and Agent Mahone, again feeling that tension that she could not explain.

Michael instead flicked the handcuff key at Agent Mahone so that he could unlock single cuff that Michael had managed to get fastened before Agent Mahone had nearly choked him to death. As much as Sara was willing to grant that Agent Mahone did not appear to be like any of the other pursuers that their mysterious enemy had sent after them, as much as she had felt uneasy about Agent Mahone's professed motives from the start, she felt that someone should remember that.

Agent Mahone earned some points by looking nearly as surprised as Sara felt as he caught the key from the air.

"We'll talk in the car," Michael said.

That left only one option. Sara sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling cold, and wondered how long it would be before Michael and Agent Mahone both caught up to what she already knew.

End Part Five


	6. Chapter 6

Part Six

Sitting unrestrained in the front seat of the car was quite a different animal from being pitched trussed into the backseat. He could not pretend on any level that this was not happening of his own volition any longer, for one, or that it would not be entirely his own doing if Pam or Cameron died because of it. If they had not died already.

Alex closed his hand into a fist and drove it hard into the plastic of the glove compartment in front of him. In the backseat, Tancredi jumped. Scofield beside him barely bothered to take his eyes away from the road. 'No other choice,' Alex had told himself, and done his best to ignore the fact that the choices had simply not been _pleasant_ ones. They might be dead already.

If that was the case, Alex promised himself grimly, then he would make Paul Kellerman look like a sweet young man who had just wandered down the wrong path by comparison. He had already thrown away everything else that he had in favor of that single, shining goal of protecting his family, and if that was gone…

Alex forced his aching fist to unflex and massaged at the knuckles so that he would not drive them drive them forward and into the dashboard again. Tancredi was being the more open in her watching of him, but that did not mean that Scofield was not also still giving him a careful eye. He was only being more surreptitious about it. The gun was still with Scofield, resting in the pocket of the driver's door. Mahone still knew that he could reach it before Scofield if he moved quickly enough. Probably he could reach it before Tancredi in the back put a bullet into him. After she had fired upon him in the motel room, Alex no longer had any doubt that she would do it.

"You're not going to be able to protect your brother if you go on the run," Alex said, as he was unable to stand the silence any longer. "Not forever." He snorted. "Likely not even for very long."

For the first time, Scofield looked at him directly rather than continuing to cast those glances from beneath his lashes. "We'll talk about it when we get there."

Alex twisted in his seat so that he could look at Scofield more fully. Scofield stiffened when he felt the gaze. "My family might be dead already," he said. Scofield was able to keep his expression neutral, though in the backseat Tancredi was beginning to look worried. Did Alex sound too composed as he said that, he wondered? He had had a great deal more time to contemplate the scenario than most people were faced with. "Because I've decided to do what's right." Scofield could not resist looking at him directly again, guilt clearly written on his face. "Don't hold me to standards that you're not willing to rise to yourself."

Scofield struck at the steering wheel and did not answer. He had not hit it nearly so hard as Alex had done the dashboard a few moments before, but Alex still leaned back in his seat and felt as if he had scored a victory. The light reflecting off of the desert landscape was wreaking hell on his head, adding one more layer to everything else that he already had swimming around in it. Thinking that it was a little late to worry about pride and that he was going to need all of his wits about him, Alex leaned down so that he could go through the suit jacket at his feet. Scofield's hand jerked towards the gun before he remembered and halted himself, Alex noticed from the corner of his eye. He approved. Morality would not keep anyone alive by itself. Best for Scofield and for Alex, too, if everyone remembered that they ought to be standing on the other side of the law.

"The other agent," Scofield began in a voice that Alex did not recognize at first, for Scofield sounded neither as if he was trying to sway Alex or as if he was in the grip of a powerful anger. It took Alex a few more seconds to realize that Scofield was, wonders and miracles, actually trying to reassure him. He would have laughed, had he not been so aware of how unpleasant a sound it would have been.

"His name is Agent Kellerman," Alex offered as he continued his rummaging. He glanced up to see Scofield's gaze turn cool and assessing for a moment. So long as Alex knew things about their foe that Scofield and Tancredi did not, he was a resource. That stopped when he know longer had any information to share. Something to keep in mind.

"Yes," Scofield said. If he continued to give Alex that intent and damnably _compassionate_ look, then he was going to run them all off of the road and end the entire cat and mouse game then and there. "He saw us take you by force. If these people don't think that you're traveling with us voluntarily, they may hold off on harming your family until they're sure."

Alex continued searching for his pen so that he would not snarl openly into Scofield's face, though if he did not find it within the next few seconds… Alex's fingers finally closed around the cool, smooth plastic that may well have prevented a fistfight. He pulled out the pen, unscrewed the cap, and quickly shook out a pill into his palm without particularly caring that Scofield and Tancredi were both watching him very closely. After a second's hesitation, he decided against a second before he straightened and palmed the pill into his mouth.

"Do you have seizures?" Tancredi asked from the backseat, sounding curious. She had recognized the pills immediately. Of course she had.

"No," Alex said shortly and in a voice that said that any further discussion on the matter would not be appreciated. The arch of Tancredi's eyebrow as she leaned back against the seat said that the conversation was only being postponed, not tabled altogether. To Scofield, Alex went on, "They'll kill them the second that they think that I'm no longer useful. I have no way of knowing when that moment will come."

"I'm sorry," Scofield said. He sounded as if he meant it. That nearly made it worse. Alex blew out a long stream of air through his nose and was spared from having to respond to that impossible comment by Scofield pulling the car over to the side of the road. Alex could not see what it was about his particular streak of desert that was any different from the desert that they had passed ten minutes before, but he was not the one who had constructed an entire elaborate escape plan and then tattooed it across his torso. Had he not had so much weighing down on him, Alex thought that he might even been enjoying himself and his new, privileged position within the action.

Scofield turned the car off and threw an approving look over his shoulder at Tancredi as he did so. Were it not for her and her selective attitude towards the commission of felonies, the entire works would have ground to a halt the day before. Scofield grabbed both the gun and the second bag, the one that Alex had still not been able to look into, before he exited the car. Alex and Tancredi followed.

The glare from the sand pricked at Alex's eyes immediately, much stronger than it had been doing while he was still in the car. The pills had not yet begun to do their full work, so that Alex's head was still pounding with all of the tension that was weighing down on him. It took no more than a second for it to inform him that it was not pleased with his conduct thus far, not pleased at all. Alex winced and turned his face downwards, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the worst of it. To his left, he sensed Tancredi doing the same thing to a lesser degree.

"Here," Scofield said softly, taking off the sunglasses that he had been wearing and giving them to her.

"Thank you," Tancredi said in an equally subdued voice as she accepted them and slid them onto her face. Alex could see that she was watching him from the corner of her eye, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to decipher the meaning behind that look.

"Do you have a cellular phone?" Alex asked Scofield instead.

Scofield did not look surprised to be asked. "Sure," he said, handing over one of the prepaid and nearly untraceable phones that could be picked up almost everywhere. The motel phone was not equipped for long distance and it had been all that Alex's nerves could take to hold on for this long. By some mutual, unspoken agreement, Scofield and Tancredi both drifted off a few paces, Tancredi watching with interest as Scofield went through the mysterious contents of the second bag. Alex did not have the time for either of them now. He turned his back on them both and dialed the number to Pam's home.

It rang for times without an answer, and Alex pinched hard at the bridge of his nose. "Come on, come on," he whispered. The pill was working; he could feel the anxiety starting to be soothed away, at least in part. Alex had a mind that he would have kept a tension headache even if he had been on a full morphine drip by that point.

The phone continued to ring. "Come _on_, Pam." Alex's voice was ragged and raw, and for a few seconds he forgot that he was supposed to be whispering. Tancredi's shoulders tensed, but she was polite enough to pretend that she had not heard. Scofield turned back around so that he could look at Alex directly.

Alex was on the verge of hurling the phone across the sand when finally, _finally_ there came the sound of a voice on the other end of the line. "Hello?" Pam asked. She sounded as if she had just woken up, in spite of the fact that it was nearly noon. Alex could already feel a perplexed frown crossing his face. "Who is this?"

"Pam, it's me," Alex said hurriedly, for the moment pushing aside his concern over the odd way that she sounded.

"Alex?" Pam went from still half-asleep to fully awake between one moment and the next. "Are you all right? You sound strange."

"I'm fine," Alex lied. A few feet away, Scofield turned and looked at him again. He was going to get a cellular phone thrown at him if he continued to do that. "Pam, something has come up at work, and I need you and Cameron to clear out of the house for a few days until I can come and get you." He could feel himself calming as he continued to speak. Pam sounded neither hurt nor frightened. That she had apparently been woken up from a nap in the middle of the day by his phone call was odd, but life was riddled with such oddities. It did not immediately mean that a conspiracy was involved. It was possible that Cameron had been sick the night before, that work was wearing her down, or even that she was still recovering from a very good date. The ink had been dry on their divorce for months, she was not beholden to him in any way.

He had been wearing the leash for so long that he could now still feel it tightening even after he had cut it off, was his problem, Alex told himself. Paranoia was a hazard of the profession, even when he had still been legit. He still could not shake the feeling of fingers crawling up and down his spine.

"Why?" Pam's voice was alert and sharp; whatever sleep that he had woken her up from had obviously not been a deep one. In all of the years that they had been together, Alex had hunted scores of vicious men, and he had never ordered her out of their house before. Save for once. "What's happened?"

"Things are getting a little out of control on the Fox River assignment," Alex said, which was not a lie, even if it still was an understatement so enormous that it was surely walking a fine line. "Threats have been made." Not strictly true, but they had certainly been implied heavily enough to let him read between the lines. "All that I need is for you and Cameron to move into a hotel for a few days." When Pam inhaled on the other end of the line, Alex turned to make eye contact with Scofield as he said deliberately, "I'm heading to Colorado now."

"Does this have anything to do with the cars?" Pam asked. Alex could hear rustling in the background on her end of the line. He assumed that she was already backing, and would have relaxed to hear it if Pam's question had not made every drop of blood that he possessed to stop in his veins.

"What cars?" he snapped in a voice so savage that Scofield and Tancredi both gave up their polite pretending that they were not listening to every word that he said and snapped their heads around towards him.

Pam paused for a moment on the other end of the line, and the sounds of her packing ceased. Alex was on the verge of calling her name when she went on, in a voice that was calm, level, and as close to losing control as she ever came. "Alex, what is happening? You don't sound right."

He had not sounded right for the past year, and they both know it. Pam was only being too tactful at the moment to mention it. "Pam, tell me about the cars," Alex instructed her in a voice that would sound steady and unconcerned to both Scofield and Tancredi. Only Pam would know him well enough to know how worried he was.

"I thought that they were from your office," Pam said. He could hear the effort that it was costing her to swallow back her questions. "I thought that maybe something had gone wrong and you didn't want to tell me, like just before you lost Shales's trail-"

"Pam," Alex cut her off, even though his audience could not possibly hear what she was saying. It was an argument that they had had many times before, both when things had started to go slightly bad and then later when they had fallen off of the rails altogether. When, if- _when_, Alex told himself sharply, and felt his fingers flex as if he was wrapping his fingers around a gun-he saw her again, they could return to the old fight until they both ran out of breath.

"I've seen sedans following me on the way to work," Pam said. "Once or twice they were parked on the other side of the street. I thought that they were FBI."

"They were," Alex told her. He had yet to actually lie to her. They could fight about the creative and malleable nature of the truth when he knew that she was not moments away from being killed, too. "There's…there's something else, and I promise you that I will explain everything to you when I know that you and Cam are safe." He was not a man who made his promises lightly. That was something else that they both knew.

"Okay," Pam said slowly, with the promissory note to an unpaid debt clearly evident in her voice. Alex very much doubted that she was going to like the answers when she got them. "Cameron is over at Danny's house, I'll go get him. Do you want to talk to him?"

'Yes,' Alex thought, and said, "There's no time. Just grab him and-"

There was a clicking sound on the line. It was so faint that an untrained ear would have no chance of catching it, and that Alex himself would have missed it if he had not been so keyed up on adrenaline. He froze.

"Alex?" Pam asked cautiously when more than a second went by and Alex did not continue to speak. "Are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here," Alex said. His voice sounded normal to his own ears, but Scofield still turned his head to look at him. Tancredi was watching the both of them from behind her sunglasses without speaking. The portion of her face that Alex could see was blank of expression. "Sorry, babe, someone needed to pull me to the side for a moment." He had not called her 'babe' since they were dating and the very early years of their marriage. Pam's pregnant pause said that she was making note of it. "I just thought of something. Don't go wasting your money on a hotel room where you and Cameron will just be bored. Go to your sister's house. I'll pick you up there when I get to Durango later today." Pam was an only child, and Alex had only instructed her to go to her sister's once before.

"Are you sure that I need to bother her?" Pam asked. Alex had loved her for years, knew her better than anyone, and he still could not hear any betraying fear in her voice. 'That's my girl.' "She has so much going on this time of the year, with the kids getting out of school and all."

"I'm sure," Alex said firmly. "Cameron will have someone to play with this way. I'll contact you soon."

"Soon," Pam echoed. "Take care of yourself, Alex."

"I will." He hung up the phone, turned, and threw the phone back at Scofield. Only quick reflexes kept Scofield from being struck in the chest with it. "Tell me that you have a plan, or I am back in that car." Drive hard and fast, and he could be in Durango before sunset.

"I have a plan," Scofield said.

"You're a fucking liar," Alex told him in a voice that was much calmer than he felt. Scofield blinked when he heard the obscenity, but otherwise did not react.

"You're doing the right thing," Scofield told him after several seconds had gone by.

Alex turned and flashed Scofield a thin-lipped smile, made all the more bitter by the fact that he knew that Scofield was right and that there was a weight on him that had been removed ever since they had left the motel room. Had it not been for the new bite of worry, Alex thought that he might even have been in a good mood.

"When you are asked to sacrifice your brother, or to sacrifice her-" Alex threw his arm out to indicate Tancredi, who did not speak. "When you have to give them up for what's right, then I will tolerate a lecture on ethics from you. Not before."

Scofield's eyes flickered. If that was guilt that he was keeping carefully masked beneath the surface, then Alex was not sure that he wanted any part of it. "This is my only chance to keep my brother safe," he began.

"Killing you might be the only way to keep my family safe," Alex shot back. "Pick another excuse."

Anger moved Scofield's face when Alex called his determination to get Burrows out of the country at all costs for what it was, but Alex was not willing to back down. They glared at one another for another moment until Scofield echoed Alex's words of a moment before, "Do you have a plan?"

"Will that make it any more or less the right thing to do?" Alex asked, and knew that he had scored points as he watched Scofield flinch back by a few inches.

"I have to talk to Lincoln," Scofield said. His eyes were dark, his brain obviously working quickly. Had it not been for the problem of Burrows, Alex had an idea that the would have already won Scofield over entirely. "If I can't convince him, then I wish you luck. If I can…then we could use your help." Scofield looked more uncertain than Alex could ever remember seeing him before, and Alex had a feeling that the high-minded words were still heavily at war within him against the urge to get Burrows to safety regardless of the collateral damage. It was good to know that Alex was a member of a club, however exclusive that club might turn out to be.

'Not good enough,' Alex was on the verge of saying, had he not closed his lips around the words before they could make their way to the surface. His Pam and Cameron stood against a whole host of others. Scofield had not been wrong when he had said that Alex was doing the right thing by turning to strike back against the giant that held so many people in its grasp. Before the sacrifices had become his own, Alex would have said that the personal was always to be sacrificed to the Right when it was required. He thought that now, if he pushed himself, he could maybe become that man again.

"Fine," Alex said. Scofield nodded and, so discreetly that Alex nearly missed it, exhaled. The thought of Scofield putting weight on Alex's answer to the point that he was waiting for it with bated breath was so large and strange that Alex was not sure what he was supposed to do about it.

"Thank you," Scofield told him in a soft, sincere voice that was nearly as unsettling as the sigh had been. He pulled out a small GPS from the bag that Alex had not looked into. The view screen was for a few seconds turned so that Alex was looking at the coordinates upside down. He felt his eyes widening as understanding struck him.

"Bolshoi booze," Alex said, clarifying when Scofield glanced up at him. "Latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. It's very clever.

A slow smile spread across Scofield's face. It looked very good on him, so unexpectedly good that Alex was taken aback for a moment and left reeling yet again. "Thank you." He glanced at his watch and nearly started before he said, "We're running late," as if he, too, had found himself pulled into an unexpected interlude. Scofield started across the sand with Tancredi at his side. It did not seem to occur to him that Alex might not be willing to follow him, still, and Alex would have felt annoyance if he had not already begun moving his feet. Between his family and the ideal, he moved towards the ideal, and wondered if this would be enough to save him or merely damn him further.

The heat did not grow any less oppressive as the trio of them walked across the desert together, nor did the sun reflecting off of it grow any more pleasant to the eye. Alex wished for the sunglasses that he had back in the official car, and for the cellular phone. The phone had been rendered untraceable for the duration of his employment as a hired killer, and would have been safe for Pam to call him back on if she had run into any trouble. Alex had noticed that Scofield had turned the prepaid phone off as soon as Alex had given it back. It had been a wise decision. Even acknowledging that, Alex still wanted to put his fist through something. Strange moment between himself and Scofield or not, he was not completely opposed to making that something Scofield's face.

They crested one of the sand dunes in time to see what Alex assumed had once been a snug cabin, perhaps for hunting, perhaps for the intense drinking of beer or the equally intense avoiding of one's wife. Scofield began clambering down the dune without saying a further word to either of his companions, and Tancredi followed suit. She had been unusually quiet for the past hour, given the several tongue-lashings that she had delivered to him since they had met the day before. Alex did not know where her sudden taciturnity had come from, or worse, thought that he might.

In order to distract himself, he climbed down the sand dune just a few paces behind the other two and stared at the cabin, which he now realized was little more than a shack. "You needed a GPS locator to find this?"

Scofield threw a glance over his shoulder. It was more amused than the situation probably warranted. Scofield lifted up the GPS locator so that Alex could see it and gave the machine a slight shake. "Could you have gotten through the desert without it?" he asked.

Alex felt a small smile crossing his face as he shook his head and admitted that, no, he could not have. "I'm not the one who made the plan," he pointed out. The collective slime of the past several months was shrugged off, momentarily, as he looked around from his new vantage point within the plan as opposed to trailing along a step or two behind. Though he could not be sure, he thought that he saw Scofield roll his eyes good-naturedly before he turned back around.

"What happens now?" Tancredi asked as Scofield held open the door so that she could pass through ahead of him. Even though her face was now shrouded in shadow and the sunglasses had to be hindering more than helping her, she did not take them off. Alex had a mind that she was using them as a shield.

Scofield, finally seeming to catch on to the fact that Sara's body language was closed off and impenetrable and had been so for the past hour, reached out and touched her on the arm as she walked past him. It seemed to be a secret language between them, this moment of touch, if the tenderness that crossed Scofield's face as he brushed his fingers over her arm was anything to go by. If so, Alex reflected, then Tancredi was not in a mood to communicate back. She hunched her shoulders and stepped away from Scofield quickly, going to inspect the few pieces of dusty and battered furniture that littered the inside of the shack. "And how do you know about this place, anyway?"

Scofield watched Tancredi with concern and seemed for the first time to realize that she was using her sunglasses for more than to protect her eyes from the glare of the sun outside. He cast Alex a sideways glance, gone and wiped free from his face so quickly that Alex would not have realized it had happened at all if he had not been watching Scofield so closely, and said, "There are people coming." Another look at Alex. If he was wondering if he had made a mistake in bringing Alex this far into the plan, Alex thought irritably, then Scofield probably should have thought of that before he had turned it into a moral battle of wills. Alex leaned back against the wall, folded his arms across his chest, and watched. The wall behind him prickled at his skin even through his shirt, but he did not move away. The details were starting to leap out at him again after months spent wrapped within a single-minded focus. Alex did not think that that was a result of his having erred on the side of caution and taken a smaller than usual dose of Midazalom, either. He liked being right, generally. There were very few occasions when it made him want to put his fist into the wall until the skin across his knuckles split.

"And I found this place about five years ago," Scofield went on as he continued to watch Tancredi in her wanderings about the room. She took the sunglasses off finally and tucked them into the front of her shirt. Her eyes, so far as Alex could see, were normal, even if her expression was concerned. "Took some time off after college to wander."

Tancredi paused in dragging her finger through the dust on the tabletop and looked up at him. "I didn't know that," she said.

"You mean that I don't seem like the type," Scofield countered.

The corner of Tancredi's mouth quirked up, the first hint of a smile that she had displayed in more than an hour. "That, too," she said before glancing at Alex and then going back to her examinations of the table. Scofield did the same, as if she was still waiting for Alex to turn on them, to have the nervous breakdown that Scofield and Tancredi were both waiting for, or perhaps to simply disappear into thin air altogether.

Alex could be far more interested in the surreptitious glances that Scofield and Tancredi were giving him, as if they were in some strange, middle of nowhere recreation of high school and he was the new kid, if he could be moved to give a damn about any of this emotional back and forth. He left the wall so that he could move closer to the door and, shielding his eyes, peer out across the desert. "When are these friends of yours coming?" he asked over his shoulder.

Scofield made a dry sound that might have been a scoff, quickly smothered. "I wouldn't go so far as to call them friends," he said. "It's a business arrangement. They were going to get me and Lincoln across the border."

Were. Alex turned. Scofield was certainly smart enough to watch his speech, if that was what was required to keep a reluctant new ally from making the short journey back into an enemy. He was also honorable that doing so would leave a sour taste in his mouth.

"I made a promise," Scofield said in response to Alex's look, as if he had seen something of reproach in Alex's face. Alex would not be surprised in the slightest if that was true. At that moment, he would not have said no to a chance to give the entire universe one collective punch in the mouth. The stupid kid of decades before, it would seem, was making the worst of all possible times to make a return. "And it will be in our own best interests not to make these people angry if they get here before Lincoln does."

"That's probably true," Alex said mildly before he turned and stared out across the sand again. He could hear Scofield and Tancredi moving around behind him, but was frankly not interested in whatever it was that the two of them were doing. He had larger worries on his mind than whether Tancredi was proving receptive to Scofield's longing looks of vice versa. He barely contained his jump when Scofield appeared beside him.

"I'm sorry that your family is caught in the middle of this," Scofield said. He sounded as if meant it, too, which easily made things worse. Alex cast him a sidelong look and said nothing. "If I could have helped them when I went to see Pam, I would have. I didn't know."

Even knowing that Scofield bore Cameron and Pam no ill will and that he likely meant every word that he said when he professed that he would have helped them, Alex felt himself growing tense again. He arched his eyebrow and asked, "Because it's right?"

Scofield arched his eyebrow right back at Alex's sarcastic tone, as if asking when Alex had developed such a jaded outlook, as if he ever could have known that Alex had been different. Alex would have to ask Pam how long her conversation with Scofield had worn on and what other topics they had covered outside of his fascination with the bird bath when he saw her again. "Yes," Scofield said, as if that should be evident.

"Even if doing right would cost you your brother?" Alex asked. A smile was playing about the edges of his mouth. He did not need a mirror in order to tell him that it was neither a pleased nor a pleasant one.

Scofield came dangerously close to a scowl. The line that appeared between his eyes did nothing to detract from the perfect, nearly eerie symmetry of his face. "You keep coming back to that," he said.

That was not an answer. Alex did not intend to let it stand as one. "It's only fair," he said. "It's the same sacrifice that you're expecting me to make, after all." The same one that he had finally come around to demanding of himself, but he felt no need to show restraint on Scofield's account.

Scofield blew out the air in his lungs on a sigh and looked away. When Alex thought for sure that Scofield was going to burn his retinas out from the glare, he turned and gripped briefly at Alex's forearm. The shock of physical contact was such that it was all that Alex could do to keep still. "You're right," he said, which was nearly the bigger shock. "So I'll do everything that I can to make sure that it's not an either-or question."

That was an easy promise to make, Alex thought, and a very difficult one to keep. The sound of an approaching truck kept him from saying so. He and Scofield shielded their eyes from the sun as one so that they could watch the vehicle come closer, a tail of dust curling up behind it. Sara came up to join them and slipped the sunglasses back onto her face so that she could do the same.

"Both of you stay here," Scofield told Alex and Tancredi as he walked out of the shadow and into the sunlight.

"Not fans of new faces?" Tancredi asked Scofield as he left. While her body was spun taut with nervousness, she still tried to twitch her lips into a smile.

Scofield returned it. "You two weren't a part of the plan," he replied before he resumed walking towards the truck, which was only now coming to a halt. Alex took the measure of the situation for a few seconds through narrowed eyes before he moved to catch up. With his longer legs, it only took a few loping strides until they were walking abreast.

Scofield cut Alex an annoyed look as he saw what he was doing. "Pretty sure that I wanted you to hang back," he said.

"I'm sorry, Scofield, did I give you the impression that my playing nicely for now means that you're in charge?" Alex asked in a pleasant voice. "Because I would hate to think that I misled you."

Scofield muttered, "No, you've been more than honest." His face when Alex cut him a glance was neutral.

Alex was unsure how to respond to that, and even less sure that any answer he could have given would not have taken the eerie civility that they were maintaining between them and shattered it. He settled for quirking his eyebrow instead before he remembered that Scofield was not the only dangerous variable in this game. By the time that the driver's feet touched the dust, Alex was as alert and focused as he could remember being in months.

A tall Latino man of roughly Alex's same age climbed down slowly from the cab of the truck. He paused when his boots touched the dirt so that he could run his eyes across Alex and Scofield both, though he had surely known that there were two men instead of one as soon as Alex and Scofield had stepped out from the shadow of the shack. Alex stayed quiet, arms folded over his chest, and let the new arrival draw all of the conclusions that he wanted.

"I thought that you said you were going to be here alone," the unnamed man said to Scofield, while Alex watched two more men climb down from the back of the truck and walk around towards Scofield and himself. He was enjoying the fact that he was unarmed less by the second. Alex cast a glance towards Scofield, who had one of the guns tucked into the back of his pants but was making no move to reach for it, and then over his shoulder and towards Tancredi in the doorway. She was shielding her face from the sun with one hand; the other was hidden by the wall. Her eyes met with Alex's for a moment before he turned back, and they were cool.

"The plan changed," Scofield said in a smooth tone. He looked over at the unnamed man's two friends and added, "You brought company, too. Surely that makes us even."

Scofield's dubious business partner smiled and lifted his shoulders into an affable shrug that immediately made the hair on the back of Alex's neck stand up. "Cousins," the man said. "Just in case. You understand."

Scofield's hint of a smile was frozen and the line of his spine was taut. "Of course," he echoed.

"Relax," the man said, reaching out and clapping Scofield on the shoulder as he walked past him. Scofield did not jerk back from the contact, as Alex had no doubt that he himself would have. From where Alex was standing, Scofield's stillness was coming about as a result of being so tight and alert that he could not move immediately, not because Scofield was any more at ease with the situation than Alex was. "I can't go close enough to either American or Mexican authorities to collect the bounty on your head without being thrown in prison myself. You're safer with me than you are your friends."

"I somehow doubt that," Scofield replied as they walked towards the shack. Before Alex could go thinking that he was becoming needlessly trustworthy, Scofield added, "The government is not particularly fond of them, either."

"The best kind of friends to have," Scofield's unnamed man replied. He flicked his eyes across the arms that Alex had crossed over his chest, and Alex realized for the first time how very much the bandages wrapped around his wrists resembled a recent suicide attempt. He did not lower them.

Alex glanced back once more at the truck before he entered the shack behind the men and felt the nagging sense of uncertainty that he had felt ever since the driver had first tapped on the brakes dissipate. Big, all terrain tires, intimate knowledge of the desert, a desire to stay well away from both the Mexican and the American authorities. Alex felt his lip begin to curl for a second before he could catch the reaction and smooth it back down again. He turned to see that one of the unnamed man's cousins was lingering in the doorway in order to watch him. Alex barely resisted the urge to swear again. There was no way of knowing how many bodies were strewn through the desert between this place and the border.

Scofield and the unnamed man were talking in low voices by the table, their heads bent over some object that Alex could not see. Rather than craning his head, he walked over to Tancredi, who was standing in the corner and watching all that went on very carefully. She was making no pretense of hiding the gun, Alex noticed. He also noticed that the cousins were keeping a close eye upon her.

"Do you really know how to use that?" Alex asked her, bending his head so that he could speak directly into her ear and keep his words from carrying. "Or were you only putting on a show earlier?"

Tancredi leaned back so that she could look him in the face and then twitched her arm so that it would not be so easy for Alex to grab the gun if he wanted it. Clever woman. "It's just point and shoot, isn't it?" she asked him. She was following Alex's lead, he noticed, and being sure not to raise her voice above a whisper. 'Clever woman,' he thought again.

Alex sighed and only barely resisted the urge to pinch at the pinch at the bridge of his nose. "Not exactly," he said, his voice growing testy as he realized that he had fallen for what was essentially a confidence game the day before. Looking once again at the unnamed man and the muscle that he had brought with him, Alex did a few calculations in his head and decided that the chances of Tancredi's handing a gun over to him voluntarily were nearly nonexistent. The chances that he would be able to take it from her without doing her serious injury, however, were excellent.

"Why do you want to know?" Tancredi asked before Alex could move.

Alex paused for a moment, weighing how much he ought to tell her, before he realized how ridiculous a secret it was to keep. The lingering taint of the conspiracy was still hanging over him. That was as good an endorsement for full disclosure as Alex needed at the moment. "That man is a coyote," he told Tancredi in that same low voice, ticking his head slightly so that Tancredi would know which one of them he meant. The other two were unlikely to be any better, he amended to himself a second later. When Tancredi's face remained smooth and blank, Alex added, "A coyote is someone who accepts money in order to smuggle immigrants across the Mexican border illegally."

"I know what a coyote is," Tancredi said. The cousins and Scofield both had now noticed that the two of them were having a hushed conversation among themselves, though Scofield remained busy and courtesy was keeping the cousins from eavesdropping two closely while everyone was still supposed to be friends. Tancredi lowered her head into her hand and coughed when she noticed the attention.

"Then you know that he is probably responsible for the deaths of dozens of people, if not more." Picturing the bodies, feeling the old righteous anger rise within him, Alex had to remember for a moment that he was supposed to be keeping his voice down. There were some knee-jerk reactions, it would seem, that were going to be with him for as long as he still drew air.

Tancredi took a deep breath and looked over Alex's shoulder at the other men. Her expression was impossible to read, but the hand that held the gun drifted closer to Alex's own. He did not think that she was aware of the gesture.

"We can't possibly go to Panama," Tancredi whispered. She glanced up at Alex and what he presumed was his surprised expression before her face hardened. "This can't all be for nothing."

She would not have referred to Burrows as nothing, Alex thought, if she had ever known what it was like to have a family member's life literally depend upon what she said or did from one moment to the next. 'She's also right,' he went on. "No," Alex said simply and with that old conviction that still surprised him when it rose up. "We can't."

Tancredi tilted her head to one side so that she could fix him with a long, scrutinizing look. Alex suddenly realized what the likely subject of the argument between Tancredi and Scofield that he had only half heard the night before had been. Tancredi had challenged Scofield to put his money where his mouth was and had gotten nowhere, while Alex of all people had at least been able to make some kind of incremental progress. Small wonder, then, that she had been so subdued over the past several hours. That mystery solved, Alex blinked as he realized that another one was looming large over him.

"Think your friends over there are about to run off together," the coyote said in a voice that was loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

Scofield looked up and noticed for the first time that Alex and Tancredi was standing so close to one another. In his case, that was a sign of high distraction. He met eyes with Alex for a moment, and Alex saw a challenge flashing there. For all that Alex had just had his brain light up in a flash of insight, leaving him reeling in the aftermath, it would appear that Scofield was still not comfortable with Alex being so close to his beloved Tancredi unsupervised. Alex raised his hands into the air in a mocking gesture and made a show of stepping a few feet away. He was sure that his expression was sarcastic; meanwhile, Tancredi's gun was still so close that Alex could have it away from here within a second.

They new vantage point allowed Alex to at least see what it was that Scofield had pulled from the bag and was using as a bargaining chip: a tray of vials that looked, at a distance, troublingly like the kind that were used to hold nitroglycerin. Alex felt a line appearing between his eyes as he glanced Scofield's way and wondered how many contingencies he had built into this long, convoluted problem of his. He also wondered if Scofield knew how many dangerous and deadly ways nitroglycerin could be used if it wound up in the wrong hands, or if what Alex had come to see as Scofield's characteristic tunnel vision even allowed him to see. Alex shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

"It's medical grade, as promised," Scofield continued saying to the coyote as one of the cousins slipped out the door of the shack, presumably so that he could make sure that no more surprises such as Alex or Tancredi could come creeping up on the shack unannounced. Or, Alex thought darkly, in order to block off all of their possible avenues of escape.

The coyote's face broke into a wide, delighted smile as he surveyed the vials that Scofield had brought him as a payment. Alex thought that it was the first genuine emotion that he had seen from the man yet. "This is almost impossible to find in Mexico," he said as he reached out to finger one of the vials. "Very inconvenient if you happen to have a heart condition."

'Or happen to be a criminal,' Alex thought sourly. He was sure that the look that he was directing towards Scofield was displeased, and noticed that Scofield was being careful at the moment not to meet his eyes.

Scofield offered the coyote a thin smile and inclined his head to one side instead. "I try to help where I can," he said. Alex noticed that he cast a glance towards the shack door, as if he was waiting for a figure to appear through it.

The coyote noticed the same movement. "When did you say that your brother was going to arrive?" he asked in a carefully neutral voice as he reached out to finger one of the vials. Alex swiveled his head towards the door in the same way that Scofield had moments before, albeit for a much different reason than Scofield himself had done. He did not like having anyone out of his sight at the moment. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Tancredi taking a step closer to him. Likely she was not aware that she had even done so.

Scofield's face froze. As his eyes were fixed upon the coyote's hands as he touched at the vials of nitroglycerin, Alex did not know whether Scofield's reaction had been caused by the question itself or by some other factor that Alex had not yet deduced. He was becoming rather used to creeping closer towards enjoying it again.

"Soon," Scofield said in a level tone. He tilted his head to the side and looked at the coyote hard, as if he was now getting the same feeling of all of the hair standing up on the back of his neck that Alex had experienced for the first time several moments before. Alex hoped that Scofield was having as much fun playing catch-up as Alex himself was. "Careful with that. Don't want to hurt yourself."

"No," the coyote murmured. "Don't want to do that." His expression was troubled, all of that easy geniality wiped away as if it had never been. "Isn't nitroglycerin ordinarily packaged in glass vials?"

Glancing at Scofield's face, Alex saw it freeze for a moment before Scofield was able to move on. 'You son of a bitch,' Alex thought. 'If you've done what I think you've done-' Then it was a good thing that Tancredi had taken that step closer to him, for he would be able to seize the gun from her now without even leaving a bruise.

"My guy repackaged them in plastic," Scofield said. His beat of hesitation had not even lasted a full second. Alex hoped that that had not been too long. "Said that glass was too fragile to transport it across long distances."

"Hmm." The coyote picked up one of the vials and held it to the light so that he could examine it for a moment before he flipped it quickly through the air. Everyone in the room sucked in their breath quickly, Scofield included. On the off chance that he was going to be wrong, Alex seized Tancredi and shoved her roughly behind him so that he was shielding her with his own body. She yelped in surprise, but still made no move to shoot him as she probably ought to have done, him being such a recent ally who was making swift and unexpected movements around her. Alex made a note of it for later use.

The vial of maybe-nitroglycerin had no chance to strike the ground. The coyote snatched it from the air before it could, the plastic making a light smacking sound as it struck his palm. Pure nitroglycerin still should have blown his arm off at the elbow at such treatment. Alex let out the breath that he had been holding and realized that Michael Scofield was either brilliant in ways that Alex was only beginning to full realize, or he was one of the stupidest men who had ever walked the earth.

The coyote stared at the flesh of his healthy, tanned, _intact_ hand with a kind of wonder. He could not have possibly taken the risk that he had without being almost entirely certain as to what the result was going to be, Alex figured, but there would always be that nagging doubt. "You son of a bitch," he snarled at Scofield, and threw the vial down to the shack's wooden floor with all of his strength. When the plastic cracked, leaking the liquid all over the floor without any explosion to follow, everyone within the cabin grew even more tense. Alex watched as whatever it was that Scofield had used to replace the nitroglycerin soak into the raw wood and put his hand out to keep Tancredi from walking out around him.

"I'm fine," Tancredi whispered to him. Looking back, Alex saw that she was gripping the gun so tightly that she was turning her knuckles white and must surely be making her hand ache. That only meant that Alex would have to try a little harder in order to get the gun away from her.

"Dr. Tancredi," he answered, "I don't think that you quite understand that situation that you are in."

She stared back at him with cool, clear eyes, her very lack of expression making the hastily bandaged wound at her temped and the dark bruise stretching across her forehead seem all the more surreal as a result. "Agent Mahone," Tancredi said to him, her tone so similar to the one that he had used with her that he could not shake the feeling that he was being deliberately mimicked, "I think I might have a better understanding than you do."

"It was sold to me as medical-grade nitroglycerin," Scofield said quickly as the coyote's face began to grow dark. "I believed him. We both got screwed here."

The situation had gone long past the point of being solved with words, if indeed it had ever been possible to solve in the first place. Alex could see that by taking a glance around the shack, reading the violence that was written in every line of the bodies of the coyote and the remaining cousin. He could hear the floorboards shifting behind him as Tancredi moved her weight from one foot to the other, then the tickle of her breath against his neck as she peeked over his shoulder. They were watching Scofield with such identical expressions, Alex thought with a dry humor that he had not known himself still capable of, that they might as well be his fan club over here.

"You did," the coyote said in a controlled tone, giving a slight nod to the remaining cousin as he did so. It was his voice that warned Alex as to what was coming next, not the nod. He spun back around towards Tancredi only far enough to seize the gun from her hand and hear her gasp of mingled surprise and pain. She would have a bruised wrist within an hour, just as Alex had known that she would. He had a great many ethical and legal crimes standing against him; there was no one more aware of that detail than Alex himself. If Tancredi's bruise was able to get all of them out alive, then Alex thought that he would be able to keep on living with himself.

It felt good to have a gun in his hand again, Alex decided as soon as he was holding the skin-warmed metal. Not the potential, not the destruction of it, but the _weight_. The feeling of stepping, however briefly, back into the role that he had enjoyed and that he had been so good at before everything had gone to hell. Alex tested the safety and discovered that Tancredi had kept it off the entire time before he spun back around leveled it at the coyote. Even with his head still ringing every time that he tried to move faster than was wise, Alex's reflexes were very quick, and he had been given a great deal of motivation to keep them in good working order as of late.

Perfect reflexes, wrong thug. As Alex brought the gun to bear upon the coyote, he saw from the corner of his eye that the remaining cousin, who was in reality probably related to the coyote through about as much blood as Alex was, was pulling a gun from the waistband of his pants. Alex did not pause for even the length of time that it would have required to let a muttered curse slide by under his breath before he corrected his aim. His finger curled around the trigger as if it had been born to be there. Alex felt his lips pressing themselves into a hard, thin line as he pulled his finger back on the trigger.

He had been constructing feverish plans has he had corrected his aim to take in the cousin rather than the coyote, dismissing each one before it had become more than a few flickers of the neurons, as he figured that the responsibility would fall to him to defend Scofield and Tancredi from the coyote and both of the cousins. He nearly missed Scofield as Scofield reached for the gun that he had tucked into the back of his pants, so swiftly and with such calm assurance was Scofield moving. If Scofield saw that the cousin was pointing the gun at him with every intention of pulling back the trigger, then that awareness did not show on his face. He raised the gun, flicked the safety off in one smooth and practiced movement, and pointed it at the coyote himself. The entire movement took less than a second from start to finish, while Scofield himself appeared as calm and at home in it as if he had been caught in the middle of a potential bloodbath every day of his life. Looking at him, one would almost think that he had it in him to pull the trigger.

"Drop it!" Alex barked at the cousin, who had wasted no time in pointing his gun at Scofield and did not seem concerned by the fact that Scofield was pointing his own gun at the cousin's boss. Maybe he thought that he could affect a power play, maybe the health benefits involved in a life of crime were really just that terrible; it was not Alex's responsibility to care. He could see the cousin's finger curling to pull back on the trigger, even at this distance, and gritted, "Do you think that I won't put you down?"

"He will," Scofield said, never taking his eyes away from the coyote. There was no way to read an emotion into the careful blankness of his face. Only Alex's angle, slightly behind Scofield and with a view of his profile more than anything else, allowed him to see how tight all of the muscles in the back of Scofield's neck were knotted in tension.

Alex was interested in Scofield's thoughts on ethics right now, he really was. "Put the gun down," he warned the cousin one more time, drawing his finger further back on the trigger as he did so. He knew that the cousin, trained in weapons, violence, and death, would noticed the gesture and more to the point would know exactly what it meant.

The coyote, for someone who had a gun trained on him, was remarkably composed. It was making Alex's hackles rise all over again, making him want to peek around the corners for the trap that he knew must be there, somewhere.

"He will," the coyote said, jerking his head briefly in the direction of Alex. "Can you? Before you are gunned down?"

Alex saw Scofield take a quick breath, and he swore to himself again in the single second in which he had time to think. Of course Scofield could not, not in the amount of time that he needed to, and very likely not ever. He was not that kind of man.

Alex, meanwhile, was exactly that kind of man. He started to pull his finger back on the trigger.

"Michael!" Tancredi said in an urgent voice from behind him. Alex was sure for a second, however irrational it might be, that she was warning Scofield about Alex himself. It was on the tip of his tongue to snap at her before he caught himself. No matter how he had chosen before, he knew at the very least that he was pointing his weapon at the correct person this time around. The note of urgency in her voice made him second-guess himself, and he turned his head quickly to look over his shoulder as he did so.

Fernando Sucre was darkening the doorway of the shack, the sun behind him casting his features into shadow and making them virtually unreadable. Didn't matter. Alex had spent so much time studying those photographs that he thought he could pick any of the convicts from a crowded room in total darkness with nothing more than a glance.

Alex swore for what he was sure was not going to be the last time as he spun back towards the man that he now realized that he never should have taken his eyes off of in the first place. The cousin had apparently decided that Scofield could wait, his boss had a point there, and it would be best to take out the man who was the biggest threat while he still had the chance to do so. While Alex had had so many guns point at him over his life that it had nearly become routine, those barrels were never going to get any smaller. Alex pulled his finger back hard against the trigger; without having time to pause and center his aim properly, the shot wound up going into the wood about six inches above the cousin's head. The man still yelped and ducked as splinters rained down on his head, turning the gun away from Alex as he did so. Sucre behind him began yelling in Spanish. Alex did not understand the words, but the cousin began nodding vigorously and then knelt so that he could lay his gun down on the floor. Alex waited until the cousin had kicked the gun out of reach before he relaxed and, lowering his own weapon, turned around.

Perhaps that had been a mistake. Alex found himself face to face with the barrel of a gun and, behind it, Lincoln Burrows.

End Part Six


	7. Chapter 7

Part Seven

Lincoln thought that he could count on both hands the number of words, total, that had been spoken on the trip south, and he liked that just fine. The only thing that concerned him was that, of even those few words, not a single one of them had been spoken by LJ. The boy sat in his seat and stared out of the window with an impossible to read expression. Maybe there were signs there, minute cracks spreading across the surface before the ice cracked altogether, that Lincoln would be able to see if he knew his kid better. It was a sour thought; Lincoln could not stop himself from glancing towards Aldo in the front seat as he had it.

Remembering what LJ had said to him the day before and that LJ was still just a kid even though he had been sucked against his will into a man's fight, Lincoln reached over and touched his son lightly on the shoulder. LJ didn't jump before he turned to look at him. Lincoln supposed that that was a good sign.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"You all right?" Lincoln asked him. He could see Aldo watching them both from the rearview mirror and only barely resisted the urge to flip the old man off. He needed to set a better example than he had been doing.

LJ turned back towards the window and gave the sort of shrug that teenagers had perfected, the kind that could mean everything or nothing at all. "Fine." He was a crap liar. Lincoln guessed that, as a father, he ought to be proud of that.

Lincoln felt the weight of a gaze and glanced towards the rearview mirror, expecting to see Aldo again watching him. he could not say that he was altogether surprised, though, by the reflection of Jane's cool gray eyes, or even particularly dismayed. Lincoln held Jane's gaze, thinking that sooner or later she would collapse to social conventions, but in the end he was the one who looked away. He squeezed at LJ's shoulder. "Everything's going to be all right."

LJ turned away from the window long enough to give his father the kind of perfectly eloquent look that, on reflection, Lincoln guessed was the only response that he really could have expected. The kid's mother had been dead less than two months, Veronica for less than two weeks, while LJ had not had time to grieve for either of them as he was imprisoned, chased, and shot at many times over. LJ's look asked Lincoln without saying a word just how in the hell he thought that he was ever going to be able to make things right again.

What LJ's mouth said was, "I know, Dad." After the force of that look, the words were almost worse. Lincoln squeezed at LJ's shoulder again and spent the rest of the night in silence.

These thoughts were weighing heavily on Lincoln's mind still as they drove the van out onto the sand and towards the place where he and Michael were supposed to meet. It made Lincoln's scalp prickle and his nerves all stand on edge, bringing new places into the plan that Michael had arranged with such precision in the first place. He knew full well that every alteration that was made to it created a ripple effect that multiplied upon itself in ways that even Michael could neither foresee nor control, and that Lincoln himself had personally created a great many of those ripples that Michael was so curiously trying to graph now. He was not stupid; he understood cause and effect. It was only that, when he was in the moment and faced with protecting his boy or giving into those white-hot pulses of rage, he could not bring himself to fully _care_. It didn't matter how strong the remorse would be later. In the moment, there was always a voice in his head telling him that he could defy the math by willing it hard enough.

They parked the van a short distance away from the location that Michael had given and walked across the final fifteen minutes or so. Aldo said that he didn't want the van to become mired down in the sand if it should become too deep, while Jane lifted one eyebrow and as usual offered no argument. Lincoln thought that it was far more likely than not that Aldo in reality simply did not want whoever might be within the shack that they could see across the sand dunes to hear the engine and know that they were approaching, at the same time that he didn't want to frighten LJ by saying this outright. Lincoln found himself agreeing with his father, an experience that put a scowl onto his face. He did not think that it was likely to be pried off for several hours.

"Wait," Jane said shortly as they drew close, suddenly lowering her voice into a whisper even though they had all been speaking in normal tones up to that point. When they fell silent but stared at her without comprehension, she sighed and pointed towards the shack's meager porch. "Look."

Lincoln held his hands over his eyes so that the glare from the sand was less severe and squinted off in the direction that Jane was indicating. It took him several moments to see it, even with Jane's helping hint; she had good eyes. There was a shadow that ought not to be there, snuggled up so closely against the shack that it was nearly impossible to pull the figure from the surrounding wood. Lincoln felt his eyes narrowing as he ran his eyes across the shadow from its head down to its feet and realized that it was not one that had any business being there.

"Do you know him?" Jane whispered to Lincoln. She studied his face with the expression of a woman who was trying to unlock the secrets of a great painting upon seeing it for the first time. Or, more likely, Lincoln thought as he reminded himself of the more relevant features of the woman who stood in front of him, a brand new weapon that she could not wait to try out. He was unused to receiving such a close scrutiny from anyone else but Michael.

Lincoln shook his head and, ignoring the concerned expression on the faces of Aldo and LJ as well as the rapt one worn by Jane, growled, "No." He reached for the back of his jeans, where there was a gun kept within easy reach. The only one in their part who was unarmed at that moment was KJ. Based upon what Aldo had said on the long drive south, Lincoln thought it very likely that he would never consent to walking around unarmed again.

What Lincoln might have done, he did not know, for the voice that always managed to convince him that he could defy math and manage the consequences this time around was beginning to rise in his head again. He was halted by Aldo grabbing his bicep and whispering, "Wait," at the same time that a second shadow appeared around the edge of the shack. It had approached from the other side and had thus been invisible until that moment. Didn't matter. Lincoln knew that silhouette and knew that it, at least, belonged. He felt a grin spreading across his face as one shadow dispatched the other with a ruthless efficiency and then slipped into the shack itself.

"I know that one," Lincoln said, hearing a certain grim satisfaction enter his voice, feeling LJ's heavy gaze as a weight against the back of his neck, and still did not stop. "Come on." Sucre might be able to bring the situation in hand on his own. Lincoln did not plan on taking that chance.

It took mere moments to cover that last expanse of sand and reach the shack, from which yelling could already be heard. When the sound of a gunshot echoed out from inside, Lincoln knew that he was now in the place where all thoughts of consequences ceased to matter at all. Michael was good with those; Lincoln himself never had been. He thumbed the safety off of the gun and stepped inside.

Going from the blinding light to the sudden dark wreaked havoc on Lincoln's eyes, so that he could not immediately make out the occupants of the shack even though he was having no problem pointing his gun at them. The first person that he was able to identify with any degree of clarity was the doc, pushed back against the wall by all of the yelling male testosterone and looking as if she might pick up one of the rickety chairs that were scattered about and beat someone with it. Her eyes only widened slightly when she saw Lincoln; Lincoln had a feeling that she had been expecting him to arrive. He gave her a brief nod of acknowledgement but still found his eyes moving inexorably towards Michael. Michael was holding a gun in his hand and pointing it towards a Latino man that Lincoln had never seen before, but who was not wearing an expression that inspired Lincoln to confidence.

The third man turned his back to Lincoln and was pointing a gun at yet another-the shack was getting crowded-while Sucre continued to yell. Lincoln could not understand what was being said, though he was willing to hedge a bet that there were some fairly significant threats involved. The man being menaced dropped his gun almost immediately and kicked it away from himself, while the one who had been doing the menacing turned around. Lincoln knew who he was as soon as he saw the profile, and had the gun up and pointed at Mahone's face before Mahone could even fully face him.

"Drop it," Lincoln growled, jerking his head to indicate the gun, as if Mahone could possibly have any doubt. With the calm and perfectly ruthless way in which Mahone had pursued them across the country, splashing both of their faces and, after Tweener, his own across every television and newspaper in the country, Lincoln was almost ready to believe that Mahone could read Lincoln's own thoughts. When Mahone proved himself inclined to be either stubborn or stupid, Lincoln tightened his finger upon the trigger and growled, "That means now, in case you were wondering."

Mahone had depths of either stupidity or plain bullheadedness that rivaled Lincoln's own, for he was not putting down the gun. The twitch of his arm said that he might even be considering raising it. Lincoln did not want to kill a man, but he took a breath and prepared himself to do just that.

"Lincoln, don't!" Michael called over to him hurriedly. Lincoln thought that maybe he could have chosen a better time to do so, such as when there _wasn't_ a man whose biggest job was to bring in the most wanted man in the United States and who had a weapon that he was showing himself inclined to use standing right in front of Lincoln. He grit his teeth and pretended as if Michael was not there. "Put it down," Lincoln repeated in a soft and dangerous voice. Mahone's eyes suggested a number of crude things that Lincoln could go do to himself, if he was feeling so inclined.

Lincoln did not turn his head to see what Michael was doing, though he heard his brother say to Sucre, "You have this?" and Sucre reply, "Sure, papi," before there was the clink of a gun being set down. Lincoln hoped that Michael was remembering to keep it well away from anyone else's easy reach. For all of Michael's brilliance, it was exactly the kind of street-ignorant mistake that he would make.

"Did you do it?" Mahone asked him. His voice was hardly more than a whisper, more akin to a growl; he sounded as if the entire world depended upon what Lincoln said next.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Lincoln asked, feeling blank and stupid. The narrowing of Mahone's eyes told him that, if there really was a test being administered at the moment, then Lincoln was failing it rather spectacularly.

"Alex," Michael said as he reached both Lincoln and Mahone at last. Lincoln thought for a second that Michael was actually going to reach out and take Mahone's arm in order to pull the gun away, and wondered what had happened over the course of the previous few days to put Michael on such friendly terms with a federal agent. "Alex, put the gun down, you've already proven yourself better-"

"Scofield, shut up," Mahone said in a tone of deep dismissal that made Michael blink in surprise, and frankly made Lincoln do the same. Maybe the first name basis had been a mistake on Michael's part. Staring hard at Lincoln, Mahone repeated, "Did you do it?"

And suddenly, Lincoln understood. The universal it, the thing that had shoved this entire mess into motion in the first place. In the chaos of the past few days, Colorado, getting back from it, and everything that he had learned along the way, Lincoln had managed to shove his conviction to the back of his mind altogether. What had at one moment seemed like such a big event that it had encompassed his entire universe and would never be forgotten had been rendered very small after Aldo had laid out the full extent of the corruption for him to see.

"No, man," Lincoln told him. He watched Mahone's arm twitch and was sure that he was going to have to pull that trigger, Michael or not, but it turned out to be only an involuntary flinch and nothing more. "Frame job from start to finish."

Mahone did not look surprised; he looked instead as if he wished that he could be. He closed his eyes and let out one of the longest, deepest sighs that Lincoln had ever heard before he nodded his head once. Between one blink of the eye and the next, the agent standing before Lincoln was five years older. He flipped the gun around in his hand, a movement so quick that it made Lincoln's twitch hard against the trigger in a way that was not good for anyone's survival, before he gave the weapon handle-first over to Michael.

"Thank you," Michael said in a voice that sounded as if he meant it. He did not look any more comfortable holding that weapon than he had the first, but they were running out of places to set down inconvenient guns.

Mahone only shook his head in response, his face dark and his eyes hooded, before he began to shoulder his way past Lincoln. "Hey," Lincoln said, putting his hand upon Mahone's shoulder and thinking that it would be a bad plan for anyone, but most especially the federal agent who had been dogging their steps ever since they had left Fox River, to go anywhere until a few things had been explained. At the feel of Lincoln's hand on his shoulder, Mahone twisted around and gave Lincoln a look suggesting he would not mind snapping Lincoln's hand off at the wrist if he continued to put it where it had no place being. Lincoln had a feeling that it had very little to do with him, at its heart. He also knew that he did not care, and would not mind putting his fist into Mahone's face even now that he was no longer holding a weapon.

"Linc, it's fine, let him go," Michael said. Lincoln decided then that Michael had even more questions to answer than Lincoln himself would have, once Michael had dealt with the matter at hand long enough to notice the new people that Lincoln had brought along with him. He took his hand from Mahone's shoulder and watched as the agent walked over to the wall where the doc was still hovering. While they were standing side by side, Lincoln noticed for the first time the bandaged cuts that marked Mahone's face and the deep bruise that crossed Sara's forehead. Michael at the moment looked like the only one who had not been injured in some way over the past few days.

Yeah. A _lot_ of questions.

"What the hell, Michael?" Lincoln asked. He could see Sucre ordering Michael's two other friends, the ones that had felt such a close bond that they had had no problem holding a gun on him, into a corner where they were relatively isolated from both the weapons and the conversation itself. Sucre could resist peeking a glance over his shoulder as he went, though he made it a short one when Lincoln glared. Their family dramas were going to need a flow chart before much more time went by; they did not need to invite others into it as well.

Michael shook his head once and then scrubbed his hand over his scalp, the surest proof that he was becoming frustrated. "He's on our side now," he said in the same half-sheepish, half-defiant tone that he had used when they were young and Lincoln had felt the rare urge to act as a replacement parent come over him.

"You sure about that?" Lincoln asked, because from where he was standing Agent Mahone certainly did not look very happy to be on their team. His stare out the grimy window was fixed and hunted, as if it was only the very slimmest of leashes that was keeping him from bolting out the door and pursuing his own agenda altogether. If he had noticed the three figures standing just outside of the door any more than Michael had, then he was not finding it within himself to care.

"No," Michael said, and Lincoln found himself relaxing in spite of all of the instincts telling him that he needed to stay tense. If Michael had not gone completely round the bend in bringing new people into the plan who had proven themselves to be very, very good at working for the other side, then Lincoln could be assured that the world had not spun completely off of its axis. He preferred not to think about the two people that he had waiting outside who had also been so very good at working for the other side and had switched for reasons that neither one of them cared to explain.

"But he has a stake in this," Michael continued. Lincoln cut his eyes towards Mahone again and decided that this must be true, for that was not the body language of a man who was there under anything but the very most extreme kind of duress.

There were enough issues for Michael and Lincoln to argue over to keep them here al day, if they really wanted to dig into it, and Lincoln did not share Michael's faith that Mahone would not find a way to bring the feds screaming down on their heads at any moment. He jerked his chin in the direction of the two men who were being kept firmly cowed by Sucre's gun and scowl. The third man, outside, was being stood over by Jane, just in case he should be belligerent when he woke up. Lincoln privately thought that the guys in here and under Sucre's control had gotten the better end of the deal.

"These the guys that were going to take us to Panama?" he asked.

Michael's normally controlled face was twisted in a rare uncertainty, but he nodded at the same. He did not seem to have noticed that Lincoln had referred to his entire endgame in the past tense. Lincoln knew that whatever distraction was keeping Michael's mind turned elsewhere and away from his all-important master plan must be a powerful one. "Yes."

"We can't go," Lincoln said. He had been turning the problem over in his mind for hours and had yet to find any way that there could be any choice in the matter. He was not Michael, he did not have Michael's brilliance or cool ability to maintain his head under exploding circumstances, but the path was still too clear to be mistaken.

Lincoln expected the biggest fight that he and Michael had ever had to erupt from those words, telling Michael that they could no longer follow the plan that Michael had spent so many meticulous months building and had essentially thrown his entire life away for. He did not expect Michael's shoulders to sag as if Lincoln had lifted an enormous burden from them and then thrown it to the side, or for the corner of Michael's mouth to quirk upwards and into a smile. "Really," was all that Michael said.

Lincoln was not sure that what he was getting was a concession, exactly, or that Michael was even responding to him directly. His brother was looking over his shoulder at Mahone, who finally seemed to realize that there were people outside of the shack who had not come in yet. His posture had changed from that of a man about to sprint off into the wilderness into one who had been jerked roughly back onto the path. He had probably seen LJ.

'Lay a hand on my kid,' Lincoln thought in Mahone's direction before he turned back towards Michael, 'and I will stake you out in the desert. Michael can find a new playmate.'

"We can't keep running," Lincoln said bluntly, resolving to ignore Mahone for now even though he could still see the man from the corner of his eye and knew that Mahone was watching him every bit as intently. "Everywhere we go, they'll just follow us. They killed Veronica already, sooner or later they'll manage to kill my kid." Mahone, back in his position reclining against the wall, shifted abruptly. Lincoln cast him a suspicious look and then otherwise ignored him. "I can't just look over my shoulder and wait for that day to come."

Michael responded by looking over his shoulder and at Mahone again. God I damnit /I , Lincoln was on the verge of yanking Michael to the side and asking what in the hell Mahone was using to keep Michael's attention fixed so firmly upon him, when all of their lives were at stake this very moment. "I was going to say the same thing," Michael replied at last. "So our new question is one of how."

This was the part that Lincoln knew that Michael was not going to like in the slightest, but they were all going to have to do things and associate with people that they did not like from here on out, Lincoln was thinking. He threw another glance towards Mahone, only because his father was out of reach. Mahone's entire body was written into one long line of indifference towards Lincoln's interest, his gaze inexorably fixed out that window. It was a perfect display, so perfect that Lincoln knew it at no more than a glance to be false. Michael knew the math, the science, the theory. That was the requirement of his job; people were not. They were, however, a part of Lincoln's. You couldn't work the people that you couldn't read. He might not be great at controlling his temper afterwards, but on the first read he was just fine. Good enough to tell that Mahone was a liar; not, to Lincoln's frustration, good enough to tell what he was lying about.

'Trust Michael,' Lincoln told himself as he turned back to his brother. As far as mantras went, it had gotten them both of prison and halfway across the country. Lincoln guessed that he could maybe listen to it for a little while longer.

"There's a way," Lincoln said at last, even though he had an idea that Michael's question had been largely rhetorical. His brother had already been getting the look which said that all of the synapses in his brain where starting to fire faster than anyone short of Einstein could hope to keep up with. Michael raised his head and quirked his eyebrows, asking all of the questions that needed to be asked without saying a word. Lincoln sighed and, turning, gestured to Aldo, LJ, and Jane to come inside. He frankly expected Jane to stay out with the fallen shadow, and lifted his eyebrows when Jane trailed in behind LJ. She looked Mahone over with a line appearing between her eyes that might have been recognition as she took up a post by the door. It both divorced her from the impending family drama and allowed her to watch the desert for impending threats.

"I didn't hear a gunshot," Lincoln told her.

Jane's response was a quick thinning of the lips that might have passed for a smile if it had taken place on anyone else's face. She took a peek out the door before she turned back and gave Lincoln that movement of her mouth again. Even though it was neither the time nor the place, Lincoln found himself wondering what she would look like if he was ever able to pull a smile from her that reached her eyes.

"No." Michael's voice was soft, hardly more than a whisper. It still whipped Lincoln's head around so fast that for a moment he was certain he could hear his brain rattling around in his skull. Michael was staring at Aldo as if he was viewing Charles Manson and not a man in his sixties, in decent enough shape but not anything that would turn heads as he walked down the street. While he very well might have racked up a body count that would put Manson to shame during his tenure with the mysterious Company, there was no way that Michael could know that.

Unless, of course, the real reason that Michael had been able to construct such an intricate plan was that he had superpowers. Brother or not, finding out that Michael could read minds would hardly be a shock at this point.

"Michael?" Lincoln asked, stepped forward quickly to grab at Michael's forearm, for Michael looked for a moment as if he might actually faint.

"Papi?" Sucre asked at the same time. He started to step forward in the same way that Lincoln had done, his face written large with concern, and was stopped by Lincoln making a savage chopping motion at him.

"Pay attention to them," Lincoln ordered, thrusting his arm out in the direction of the men that Sucre was holding the gun on. They had used the moment of distraction to start creeping up on him. When Sucre jerked back around and snarled a series of Spanish at them in the unmistakable tone of a threat, they abruptly found that it was better to stay where they had been.

"And you stay where you are," Lincoln said to Aldo. Aldo did not seem inclined to obey, starting at the son that he had supposedly never seen before with a mixture of regret, horror at Michael's reaction, and what Lincoln had no other choice but to admit was love. Lord help the man who tried to make him admit that, though.

"You, too," Lincoln said to Mahone after a moment's more reflection, for the agent had yet to leave his position by the wall but was all the same leaning forward as if an iron force of will was the only thing keeping him back. The genuine concern that moved his face and altered the lines of his face before he shut it down was enough to make Lincoln wonder if Michael could not afford to be even more certain than he was about which side of the fence Mahone was standing on now.

"You're the boss," Mahone said as he settled back, folded his arms over his chest, and looked as if he was perfectly content to watch the scene without interference from there on out. It was one of the most eloquent fuck yous that Lincoln had ever heard, and it made him feel much better about the glare that he threw back before he reached for his brother again.

"Agent," the doc said in the kind of reproving tone that only she could pull out without sounding sanctimonious. Lincoln had heard her use it on inmates who had injured themselves through their own willful stupidity more than once. The use of his title was a smart move on her part, for Mahone gave her a wry look before he spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture and settled back against the wall again. He still watched Michael, though, and in a manner that Lincoln could not help comparing to a hawk watching a rabbit run across a field. He didn't like it.

"Michael? Are you all right?" Michael responded to the sound of Sara's voice and to her going to him and putting her hand upon his arm more than he had Lincoln doing the same, putting his fingers over hers and then giving a quick squeeze, but he still had eyes only for Aldo.

"You can't be real," Michael said.

Aldo's smile was sad, equal parts weary and wary. He knew exactly what Michael was panicking about, Lincoln realized then, and knew that Michael's reaction to him was not overdone. "I am, son."

A flash of Michael's normal life came back into his face in the form of a slight narrowing of the eyes when Aldo addressed him as 'son'. "Then I watched you kill a man," he said. Lincoln saw Sara's fingers tightening on Michael's arm before he himself was spinning back to catch Aldo's reaction.

The old man's days as a poker player were behind him. Lincoln took one look at his face and knew immediately that what Michael was saying was true. He took a step closer to his brother, keeping Michael separated from Aldo with his body. "What's he talking about?" he demanded.

Michael seemed to be getting control of himself again with Sara beside him, Lincoln in front, and Sucre behind, all three of them forming their own wall of support around him. He did not seem inclined to answer through anything more than a glare. Aldo sighed and said, "That man would have killed you eventually, Michael. I was doing what I thought was right."

"What you thought was right was murder," Michael said in a cold voice that made the air shiver. Mahone and Jane both straightened in their respective posts, a pair of predators scenting potential blood on the air. That was not making Lincoln feel any better.

"There was no other way," Aldo gritted at Michael. Lincoln had a mind that he had pictured this reunion playing out quite differently in his head; the remorse was being swept away by a pulsing anger before Lincoln's eyes.

"There is always another way," Michael replied and, for reasons that Lincoln did not understand, looked Mahone's way. Mahone stayed in his position against the wall, arms folded over his chest, in that position of calm that all of the focus in the world was never going to make convincing. "You could have stayed."

"You and Lincoln were safer with me gone," Aldo said softly. Mahone stirred, his face becoming complicated for a moment before he was able to pull it under control again.

Michael made a scoffing noise. Lincoln said, "Michael, listen to him. He can help us take out these people after us." It felt strange, actually being the one advocating that someone else should pause and listen.

Michael was working himself up to a towering anger in the way that he had been able to do ever since they were children. Most people did not realize until they knew Michael very well that his normal calm rationality was a veneer over a deep well of emotion. Michael could cut it off swiftly, though, and did so now. His face shut down even as his eyes lit up with the need for knowledge. "How?" Michael asked.

"Because I helped to cause it," Aldo said simply.

It was nothing that Michael did not know, nothing that Lincoln had not already relayed back to him after their father had saved Lincoln's life, but it still made Michael's eyes go moody and dark. "We all have to make sacrifices," he muttered in a dark tone that Lincoln liked even less when he saw Mahone lift his head as if he understood. "But that's not a plan." The last part was spoken by the Michael that Lincoln knew. He saw that the was not the only one in the room who was relieved to hear it.

Aldo shook his head. "Only the beginnings of one," he said before he gave a deep, almost gentlemanly nod in Sara's direction. Under different circumstances, in a different era, Lincoln thought that he might even have bowed to her. "Dr. Tancredi. I'm very pleased to meet you. I was worried that we would not be able to reach you in time."

Sara looked both startled and wary, taking a step back from Aldo on instinct. She didn't get through medical school on her looks, Lincoln was glad to note. Sara touched at the bruise on her forehead and said, "I don't have anything to do with this."

"Your father did," Alex told her. "We think that he gave you something before he died."

Sara twitched and grabbed for her purse before she caught herself and stilled the motion. Her and Michael both, Lincoln felt like sighing. The two people with the greatest chance of bringing down a conspiracy whose borders Lincoln's mind could hardly begin to fathom, and of course they would wind up being the two who could not tell a convincing lie to save their lives. "Gave me I what /I ?" she asked.

"You know, I think," Aldo said, nodding towards Sara's purse before he lifted his eyes towards the two men in the corner. "That's about all that we need to share now. There's a van about a quarter mile from here. It will hold everyone." Aldo glanced at Mahone for a moment as he spoke, clearly wondering if he really needed to be a part of the everyone who came along on their little road trip. Lincoln did not know if he ought to be gratified that someone was sharing his thought, or upset that the person turned out to be Aldo.

"We gotta fight," Lincoln said simply to Michael, lifting his shoulders into a shrug.

"Yes," Michael muttered, his voice tight. Lincoln still thought that he was more relieved than he was willing to let on. "Do you remember when this plan was simple?" One corner of Michael's mouth lifted upwards and into a wry smile.

It was that smile that made it easy for Lincoln to throw back his head and laugh. "No," he said. "Never."

"Hey, papi?" Sucre asked. He was turning his head to look at Michael over his shoulder, but he wasn't making the mistake of taking his attention away from Michael's traitorous friends again. "Look, you guys can stay if you want, but I gotta go. I gotta meet my girl."

"Of course," Michael said. His mouth twisted into a smile that looked genuine and relaxed. He did not do that very often. Michael reached out and grabbed at Sucre's shoulder. "Thanks for coming, papi."

The use of Sucre's nickname made him grin. "Like I'm going to leave you twisting in the wind."

Michael's expression changed, becoming ominous, as he looked towards the friends. "Where is the plane landing?"

The leader sneered. "The deal was a plane for nitro, hombre. One part of the equation is missing."

Lincoln ground his teeth together and made a sound that was very close to a growl. It made Michael and Sucre both look over at him in alarm. He did not even realize that he had begun to move until he was on the other side of the room and using his superior height and weight to loom over the man. Lincoln had cast a long shadow since he was eighteen, but the leader did not appear cowed. Not until Lincoln slammed his fist into the wood directly beside the man's head, hard enough to make the entire shack rattle and to drive splinters into Lincoln's knuckles, did the mans' expression begin to display some uncertainty.

"And you tried to kill him," Lincoln said in a low, rumbling voice that felt as if it was coming from down within his chest rather than out of his throat. "Think that makes you the one who needs to be making amends. Where?" Lincoln punctuated the question by slamming his fist into the wood again. Dust drifted down from the ceiling, and Lincoln knew that the man in front of him must be thinking about how much damage his fist could be doing if it were to be striking flesh rather than wood. Good. Lincoln wanted him to be stewing long and hard over that.

"Finley Road, off Highway 8," the man said after a long beat, and glanced towards his henchman. Lincoln felt his eyes narrowing and his blood rising. Michael looked satisfied by that answer. Michael was not the one who made it his business to read people, and to see the very worst potential that crouched in each of them.

"He's lying," Mahone said from behind Lincoln. Lincoln turned far enough to see that Mahone had left his position of detached distance against the wall and was stalking forward. He moved like a predator, he _looked_ like a man who belonged on the other side. Lincoln wondered what in the hell Michael was thinking.

"I know," Lincoln snapped. The thin smile that crossed Mahone's face made it difficult for Lincoln to remember why he should not drive his fist into Mahone's face. He ground his teeth together, turned back, and drove his fist into the wood mere inches from the man's head again. More dust fell down from the ceiling and into everyone's hair. Lincoln's arm ached from the force that he was using. "Next time it's your face," he warned. "Where's the goddamned plane landing?"

Lincoln knew how to read people. So, it would seem, did the man that Michael had employed in order to get them all to Panama. It left Lincoln with little doubt as to which side of the law that the man was standing on. The man's eyes flickered before he said in a sullen tone, "Route 4, on the Mile 7 marker."

He was telling the truth this time. That did not change in the slightest Lincoln's urge to draw his fist back and then put it forward into the man's face again and again. Lincoln took a shaky breath and stepped back before he could give in to that urge.

"Thanks, man," Sucre said, sounding equal parts wary and impressed. "I won't forget this."

"Go find your girl," Michael said to Sucre. He was watching Lincoln as he spoke, and his expression was not approving.

"Sure," Sucre said, but chose the moment to pull Michael into a spontaneous hug rather than heading for the door. Michael's second or so of evident surprise ended quickly, and he returned the gesture, clapping Sucre on the shoulder before he let him go. "Someday, I'll send you pictures of Maricruz when her belly is big." Sucre grinned and was gone.

Lincoln then glared at both of the men who were left and said, "You're gone." They bolted nearly as swiftly as Sucre had. Maybe they would run to tell the police exactly what had gone down, maybe they would not. To Lincoln's eye, they had not looked like the sort of men who would have a great relationship with the law. He saw Michael staring out the door after them and knew that he must be thinking the same thing, but his brother's face was still troubled.

"You trust those men?" Aldo asked him.

Michael looked over, narrowed his eyes. Lincoln thought that his brother was on the verge of telling his father that he at the moment trusted those criminals much more than he did his own father, but Michael swallowed back the words and said only, "No."

"Then we need to move," Aldo turned away, his voice and posture stating clearly that he believed himself to be in control of the situation. Lincoln watched both Michael and Mahone stiffen up in defiance in the same way that he knew he himself had done when the situation was first explained to him. Sara still looked lost in her own world, fingering her bag as if it now contained precious jewels, as well as wearing ad deep line between her eyes. "There are a series of safe houses in Colorado that haven't been compromised-"

"Good," Mahone cut him off. Aldo nearly stepped back. Lincoln did not think that people interrupted him very much. He could not help but give Mahone a few points for that in the running tally that he was keeping in his had. "Then one of them will be near Durango. I'll need a car and a gun." The tone of his voice was not a request, and neither was the glance that he turned Michael's way. Michael lifted his eyebrows, Lincoln noticed, and even looked approving. "I'm going to pick up my family."

The annoyance that wrote Aldo's face could have been as a result of seeing a genuine flaw in the plan or merely as a result of someone not leaping to follow his lead. Either way, the reluctant amusement that Lincoln was feeling did not seem as if it was going to fade soon. "We can't afford distractions," he started.

"I'm not going to abandon them," Mahone interrupted him again, wearing a thin and unpleasant smile and leaving the 'like you did' unspoken. Lincoln was beginning to see that Mahone had a distinct talent for an unspoken 'fuck you'. "How long have you been off of the leash? A couple of decades, sounds like." The longer that that smile wore on, the more unpleasant and dangerous it became. "I've been off of it for about eighteen hours. Who do you think has the best idea about what's going on on the inside?"

This was the first that Lincoln had heard of Mahone being allied with the Company at all, rather than merely chasing the wrong men without realizing that he was doing so. He threw Michael an alarmed look. The rate of Lincoln's pulse was not coming down as Michael still didn't look alarmed by this admission.

"Don't count on it," Aldo said softly. "I've been fighting them for far longer than you even thought about working for them, I'm willing to bet."

Mahone's eyes narrowed, the room crackled, and Lincoln was certain that he was going to have to physically separate the man who might be an ally and might be an enemy from his own father, who also might be an ally and might be an enemy. "He gets his family," Michael said before an actual fight could break out. Mahone swallowed back the tension that Lincoln was now beginning to realize had nothing to do with Aldo at all and most likely never had, and looked over to Michael instead. The look that passed across both of their faces was too complicated for an outsider to figure out and very well might have been too complicated for they themselves to decipher, but it made a prickling feeling run up Lincoln's spine all the same. Sara, he noticed, had also seen, and looked nearly stricken as a result.

'Oh, kid,' Lincoln thought in his brother's direction, 'for someone who is so smart, there are times when you are so goddamned stupid.' Michael was never going to be able to read people the way that he could read virtually everything else. It was his single biggest weakness.

"Before we do anything else," Michael concluded at last. He did not seem to realize that he had drawn the eye of everyone else in the room in addition to Mahone. "That was the promise."

Aldo clearly did not like the sound of doing anything that involved delaying his quest against the Company, now that he might finally have a chance of bringing them down. He also liked the idea of losing Michael even less. With Michael would go Sara, and the only lucky break that they had managed to get so far. Lincoln would have liked to think that a part of Aldo's motivation was simply a desire to be with his son, but he could not quite force himself across that distance.

"Fine," Aldo said. "But we still have to move quickly."

As they turned to leave, Mahone made eye with LJ, who had been lingering near the door with Jane. Lincoln and LJ both tensed, but Mahone's response was a weary sigh. "You're innocent, too?" he asked LJ. He already knew the answer.

"Yeah," LJ said. He began to fidget under Mahone's gaze, only to make a visible effort to halt himself. "These, uh, Company guys. They killed my mom to get my dad under control."

Mahone sighed again before he reached out and gripped LJ on the shoulder in passing. Because there seemed to be a real apology written into the gesture, and because it ended quickly, Lincoln decided that he would let it pass. Mahone and Jane shared a look as they passed one another, as if each was recognizing the other and could not quite remember where. That did not make Lincoln feel any better. He supposed that he was going to have to get used to a lot of things doing that.

With these thoughts weighing heavily on his mind, Lincoln dropped back so that he could speak to Michael privately. "You're too trusting," he said in a low voice.

Michael's lips curved up into that self-satisfied smile that he could get sometimes. Lincoln was going to have to take a poll one of these days, and find out if that smile drove anyone else straight up the fucking wall like it did him. He didn't think that he was going to be disappointed.

"And you don't trust enough," Michael replied. "People are better than you think they are, Linc."

'Is that why you nearly jumped out of your skin because you saw your own father?' Lincoln wanted to ask, and restrained himself just in time. He brought up the rear instead, watching the people in front of him and thinking that if Michael's theory on human nature was correct, then they would not be trudging across the sand like a ragtag group of knights finally turning to meet the dragon in the first place.

'The dragon always falls,' Lincoln reminded himself in a grim internal voice, so fierce that it would have made everyone flinch away from him if he had said it out loud. 'Don't forget: in the end the dragon always falls.'

End Part Seven


	8. Chapter 8

Part Eight

Under different circumstances, Michael would have expected the hours taking them back to Colorado among the most boring of his life. It did not take him long to realize that this had been a naïve assumption; he ought to have known better. There were far too many personalities who would rather be at war with one another sharing too small a space, and the atmosphere was that of gasoline waiting for the first hint of a spark. How many battle flags could be raised simultaneously while at the same time no one was quite looking anyone else in the eye Michael would never know. His forte was in analyzing structures, not people. The hidden language of the latter was by and large lost to him.

As Michael watched without being noticed or perhaps only being industriously ignored, Mahone occupied his time with staring out at the passing scenery as if he might leap from the vehicle at any moment. Even while he was doing a studious job of pretending that there was no one else in the vehicle with him and that it was propelling itself forward under the power of some kind of obscure magic, Mahone radiated tension that was just asking for someone to give him an excuse, anything to convince him that he had made the wrong choice. Michael saw Mahone's gaze being directed towards the back of Aldo's head more than once and thought it was a marvel that Mahone had not yet attempted to leap over the front seat, wrest the wheel away from Aldo, and drive them all to Colorado himself at a speed that would make a mockery of all of the limit signs. Alex Mahone did not like situations that were out of his control. It was something that they had in common.

Perhaps far from the only thing, when one got right down to it. Michael's gaze moved on to Lincoln, who had thus far been occupying himself by dividing his attention between glaring at Aldo, glaring at Mahone, and watching his son carefully to make sure that LJ's eerie sense of calm was not merely the beginnings of a complete and utter breakdown. Mahone had accused him of committing the exact same sin that he himself was doing before he had agreed to defect over to their side, however conditionally, that of putting the welfare of someone that he cared about ahead of that which he knew to be right. Michael had tired to deny it then and tried to deny it now, but there was a voice within him that refused to let it rest. He had not come up with the intricate plan to free Lincoln by until he had been convinced of Lincoln's innocence, he insisted to himself, and yet could not stop remembering that he and Lincoln had also been fighting at the time, and that Michael had decided that Lincoln was innocent based upon little more than faith. The actual proof had not come until much later, and with it a great many bodies that would have gone with their murders unavenged if Lincoln and Michael had not consented to alter their plans. Even now, fighting the conspiracy on its own terms rather than merely trying to outrun its reach could be looked up as being in Lincoln's best interests. It was not a pleasing thought.

Michael's soft, frustrated exhalation not loud enough to be called a sigh and ought to have been audible to him alone. He was not pleased when Mahone immediately turned his gaze away from the window and directed it towards Michael instead. Mahone's stare was neither hostile nor friendly, and only scrutinized Michael as if he was a difficult math problem. If this was the way in which Michael ordinarily looked at people, then he could perhaps understand why people had such visceral reactions to him. He and Mahone continued to gaze at one another for a few moments longer before either man consented to look away.

Beside Michael, Sara made a soft, tired sound and shifted in her seat. Michael looked back at her with a slightly guilty start, realizing that he had been so wrapped up within his head that he had nearly forgotten that she was there. The would not have happened if they had simply followed Michael's original plan and gone to Panama, he thought with a touch of irritability.

Sara had been sitting without speaking for the past hour, occasionally reaching into her bag so that she could touch at a bronze key. Her expression was solemn and nearly fierce every time that she did. Sara's body was pressed up against Michael's from her shoulder to her thigh, heat radiating from her body into his. It was more physical contact than they had shared with one another since the day in the prison when Michael had seized her face and kissed her for all that the two of them were worth, and this time to a far less self-serving end. Sara had her hand splayed against her temple now as if she was struggling to keep the pounding there from escaping out into the world.

Michael started to touch Sara on the arm, remembered that touch had a troubled history between the two of them, and paused with his hand hovering an inch or so above her shirt. Sara sensed that he was there after a moment and turned her head so that she could look at him. "Are you all right?" Michael asked her.

The corners of Sara's mouth twitched; Michael was going to be generous and call it a reassuring smile. "Sore," she said, shifting again. She cringed as a bolt of sunlight came through the window and struck her directly in the eyes. "Headache."

"That happens when you drive into a wall." It was still one of the bravest and most insane things that Michael had ever seen anyone do before. He finally brought his hand down on Sara's arm and rubbed in a reassuring cycle. "I'm sure that Aldo has painkillers at the safe house." Michael raised his eyes from Sara and was not surprised to see that Aldo was watching him through the rearview mirror. Jane was on the verge of lunging across the center divide and grabbing the steering wheel so that they would not veer off of the rod.

"Yes," Aldo said. He sounded more uncertain than Michael would have previously thought him capable of, and at the moment was hardly managing to keep meeting Michael's eyes. After a beat, he pulled himself together and continued in a normal tone of voice, "My people tend to be injured fairly regularly. We're well-stocked."

"Imagine that." Michael turned back to Sara before he wound up saying something that he might possibly regret. He noticed that Jane was giving him a reproachful look as he did so, and promptly ignored her. "Think you can hold on a little bit longer?" The landscape had been changing, and they could not be far now.

Sara lowered her hand from her eyes and peeked at Michael over the top of them. "I'll make it," she said, her voice neutral. She had been acting strangely for the past few hours, closed off and unreadable after the way that they had spent the previous two days of acting like separate halves of the same machine. Michael could not say why this sudden change had come about, only that he had the irritating conviction that the answer would come to him immediately if Sara were a building rather than a human being. She added to the confusion a moment later by slowly and almost hesitantly laying her head down against his shoulder and using his body to shield her eyes from the sun. Michael paused for a beat before he realized what she was doing and shifted so that he could put his arm around her, his movements if anything more cautious and careful than her own had been. Deprived of Michael's shoulder, Sara soon found room to shield her face against his chest instead. Both of them were moving as if they thought that the other one might break.

Michael was sure that he and Sara were the objects of a great deal of attention, given the way that everyone, including his own father, seemed to look at him as if he were the keeper of the keys to the universe, but he was in no kind of mood to deal with that now. He focused on Sara instead, stroking the strands of her brilliant auburn hair back from her face. That exposed both her multi-hued bruise and the butterfly bandages that were holding the edges of the cut on her temple together; his list of collateral damage was growing longer and longer.

"I would have wound up being involved in this even if you had not singled me out at Fox River," Sara broke the silence by whispering. She was pitching her voice low so that the conversation would remain private even in their cramped quarters, and Michael had to dip his head so that he could hear her. Sara nudged at her purse with her foot. Michael thought that she would have much rather given it a good, hard kick. "I wouldn't have been nearly as ready, though."

"I wasn't going to say anything," Michael said. He had already apologized to her for having made her a target for the same people who wanted Lincoln and himself dead so badly. Everything else was going to be a matter of turning thought into act, and preventing her from suffering for it any further.

Sara angled her face upwards so that she could look him in the eye. Had they been alone, Michael was not sure what he might have done. "You were thinking it," Sara said calmly before she turned her face against his chest again. "I could tell." Michael began to play with her hair.

"You said that you had a kid?" Lincoln startled them both by asking Mahone in a gruff voice. Michael had given Lincoln enough of the details of Mahone's deal with the Company to assure him that Mahone was unlikely to betray them now. Protecting family was something that he had known Lincoln would understand.

"I didn't, actually," Mahone said in that dry tone that he tended to adopt. Much as it puzzled Michael to realize that he could now read Mahone's moods, like a sudden needless embellishment interrupting what ought to have been a clean and perfect skyline, the sarcastic man who leaned back in his seat and viewed Lincoln through hooded eyes was far better than the one who had been on the verge of shattering into a thousand pieces without caring who was hit by the shrapnel.

Mahone lowered his eyes away from Lincoln's, looked at Michael instead, and let him know with that stare that he knew very well why Lincoln knew the details of Mahone's personal situation. Michael lifted his shoulders into a slight shrug. His intuition told him that Lincoln's question had come about in the first place because Mahone had been watching Michael and Sara with an intensity that Lincoln had not appreciated.

"But yes," Mahone finished finally, twisting his head back so that he could look Lincoln in the eye again. "I have a son."

Lincoln's face was solemn, hiding his emotions far better than Michael was accustomed to his brother being able to do. If not for the slightly narrowed eyes, he could have been talking to anyone. "What if you can't save him?" 'Whose side will you be on then?' Michael could have kicked his brother, if it would not have involved leaping over the seat and causing Aldo to finally drive all of them right off of the road.

Mahone's entire body went still as if he had been replaced with a stone replicate, staring back at Lincoln. Even LJ seemed to realize that a line had been crossed and straightened in his seat, looking rapidly back and forth between the two men. "Then I'll make sure that they know how much he's worth to me," Mahone said softly, somehow more dangerous by virtue of keeping himself at such low volume.

"Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord," Jane said from the front seat without taking her eyes away from the windshield. For a few seconds everyone was looking at her, in particular Mahone. Lincoln looked oddly satisfied by Mahone's response. Michael could still not stop himself from glaring at him.

"We're nearly there," Aldo said from the front. He was the only one who had not reacted to Jane's strange pronouncement. Michael thought that his father sounded nearly relieved, and found that he shared the sentiment. Let them all play out their alliances and soap operas in a place where they would not be forced into such tight proximity with one another.

"Nice," Lincoln said as the van pulled to a halt in front of a large stone house after several minutes spent in silence traveling down a gravel road. Michael made note of every detail of the scenery as they passed, noting the isolation. If one single thing went wrong…he noticed that Mahone on the opposite side of the van had grown tense and was willing to bet that he was running the same analysis.

"You Company guys," Lincoln went on, and Michael swore that he could see his brother considering adding 'former' and then dismissing it in the same breath. "You seem to have excellent taste in property."

Aldo's hands flexed against the steering wheel for a moment before they relaxed again. Michael, who thought that it was unwise to bait their only ally at the same time that he thought Aldo deserved everything that Lincoln was saying and then some, kept silent. He tightened his grip around Sara's shoulder, and she looked at him.

"Your tax dollars at work," Aldo grunted as he hit the brakes and brought the van to a halt.

Michael thought that Mahone would have leapt out before the vehicle even had a chance to stop moving if that had not meant scrambling over the bodies of everyone else in the process. Even then, it looked like a close call. "I need a car," he told Aldo, rather than asking. Michael could feel his eyebrows rising and saw that Aldo was making the exact same gesture. He was nearly a decade and a half too old to be having fits because he and his father happened to share a few gestures in common, probably, but Michael felt a prickle running up and down his spine all the same. Sara squeezed at his hand.

Aldo looked Mahone over and, a moment of recognition crossing his face, nodded once. "That can be arranged," he said. "Take Jane with you."

Mahone was already shaking his head. "This is something that I need to do alone."

"She knows how the Company operates."

"So do I."

Aldo let out a small and nearly bitter chuckle. "You have no idea," he said. Michael thought that he now understood the look of recognition that Aldo had given Mahone a moment before. "When they're still in the thick of it, no one ever really knows."

"I've been fighting the Company for five years, Agent Mahone," Jane broke in in a calm voice. Her eyes were as composed and as spooky as ever.

Mahone quirked an eyebrow at her and then twisted his mouth into a smile that should been friendly but wasn't. "How long did you work for them first?"

"Another five years," Jane replied smoothly and without appearing offended. "So you have about a fifty-fifty chance if you're trying to use that to determine where my loyalty lies. On the other hand, by your account you've been working for the Company for the past several months, and fighting them for the past two days."

Mahone let out a startled laugh. "Fair enough," he said, and threw out his arm in an after-you gesture. He managed to make the moment seem courtly in spite of the fact that he was clearly not pleased with the situation.

"The vehicles are this way," Jane said, starting to lead Mahone around the side of the house. Her demeanor towards him had warmed through the exchange, though Michael could not say why. He thought that his own inability to read her had nothing to do with his general difficulties in understanding people and everything to do with Jane.

"Alex," Michael called before Mahone could get too far. Mahone paused and looked back as Michael left the group at the front of the house. His body language went tense whenever Michael came near him, as Michael was sure his own must do in return. Having a history of attempted murder between them could do that. "Thank you. I understand the sacrifices that you might have to make in order to do the right thing here, and I'm very sorry for them."

Mahone tipped his head back and regarded the sky for a long moment. Whatever he saw there did not seem to satisfy him. "You don't, Scofield," he said when he had lowered his head so that he could look Michael in the eye again. There was no malice in his tone. "I hope that you never have to."

Michael glanced once over his shoulder at Lincoln and Sara before he held out his hand for Mahone to take. After a moment Mahone took it, looking nearly surprised. "For your sake, Alex, I hope that you never fully have to, either."

Mahone leaned back, and Michael thought surely that he would release his hand and then turn to leave without another word. He was nearly right; he did not expect the swift squeeze of his hand that came before Mahone let him go. Mahone was disappearing around the corner of the house before Michael could react.

He blew out a long stream of air through his nose. LJ was looking shell-shocked by the entire situation, Aldo was looking more displeased with every moment that they stood out in the open, supposed safe house or not, and Lincoln and Sara were both giving him strange looks that Michael could not immediately decipher. Lincoln's took only a little work: as much as conventional authority and Lincoln Burrows had seemed fated to butt their heads against one another over and over again since Lincoln had reached fifteen, authority that had then allowed itself to be corrupted was even worse. Lincoln was not going to be pleased for so long as Mahone was working with them, not matter how valuable Mahone's fresh insights into the Company turned out to be.

Sara presented a much more difficult and unexpected problem. She had drawn into a self-contained shell some hours before, save for rare flashes when Michael suspected that she was simply too tired and hurting to maintain it any longer. Her eyes were hooded, and it took a few seconds for her to squeeze back when Michael squeezed at her hand.

Lincoln had filled Michael in on all of the pertinent details of what had happened at the first safe house, so that Michael's nerves were jangling as he stepped into the second. It was spacious and well-furnished, without any of the dusty neglect or the dark corners that Michael realized he had subconsciously come to expect from a house were rebellion was being born. This home easily could belong to a well to do lawyer or physician. Michael and Sara looked at each other, thinking at the same time that their accumulated road filth was nearly blasphemous in such chill taste.

"There are facilities where you can clean up," Aldo began, at the same time that a short blonde came around the corner and into the entryway suddenly. She was busy looking down at a file folder in her hand; Michael would later wonder how large the resistance force that had pitted itself against the Company actually was, if they would afford to keep on people who clearly had no survival instincts at all.

"Miss Graves called," the woman said, glancing up from her file folder at the assembled group and even flashing them a quick, harried smile before she went back to her paperwork. "She wants a progress report, well, 'before I'm inspired to drink' was what she said, and I explained that there one of the other houses was compromised-"

"Who the hell are you?" Lincoln interrupted in a soft and dangerous voice. There was no trademark growl; he did not need it. The woman shut her mouth with an audible clicking sound and seemed to grow a danger sense from scratch in the span of roughly three seconds as she looked to Aldo for help.

"This is Monica," Aldo said swiftly, before Lincoln could take the woman and slam her up against the wall. Given the way that Lincoln's arm had jerked back quickly as if to shield LJ from a bullet that had not been fired yet, Michael thought that Lincoln would have done it. "She keeps the different agents and safe houses in contact with one another."

"She's also going to back up a little bit, she thinks," Monica said, taking a few steps towards the hallway again to take her out of Lincoln's immediate range. She eyed him up and down. Monica had spent the previous several seconds looking as if she was torn between creeping to Aldo for protection and fleeing the entryway altogether.

"I thought that you said this place was safe," Michael told Aldo. His hand had come up to cup Sara's elbow of its own accord, he discovered, and he was one step away from outright shoving her behind him as Lincoln had done with LJ.

"It is," Aldo told them all, even sounding a little peeved as he put himself between Lincoln and Monica. She looked relieved for it. "Monica has been working against the Company for nearly a decade."

"And I didn't actually work for them at all before that," Monica said, looking more sure of herself by the moment even as she clearly would have been pleased if Lincoln was not in such close proximity to her. "Which makes me the exception rather than the rule."

That was sadly seeming to be the case. "You're sure that she won't turn on us?" Michael asked Aldo, even though he did not believe that Aldo's opinion truly meant anything, in the end. He had doubtless believed that the man at the other house was incorruptible as well. Monica folded her arms over her chest and looked irritated, but not particularly surprised.

"I'm sure," Aldo said. Michael had known that eh would, and the glances that he was throwing Monica's way weren't giving him any new insights.

A leap of faith, then. Michael had done so many of those since he had decided that Lincoln was innocent, and they were reaching across such longer and longer distances, that he was bound to be brought crashing down to earth by one of them sooner or later. Michael took a breath, thought of Mahone way on his mission to pull his family from harm's way, and decided that he had one more leap left in him.

"It's our only chance," he told Lincoln in order to make some of the tension run out of Lincoln's shoulders. When it did, a healthy portion of it left Monica, as well. Aldo's face tightened, but for the moment Michael could not be moved to care.

Aldo nodded and touched Monica lightly upon the shoulder. "Let Graves know that I will contact her soon."

"She'll be thrilled," Monica said before she began to stride off with her files under one arm, only to turn back as Aldo called her name.

"And let Ben know that it would not be wise to enter any rooms suddenly for the time being."

Monica paused and raised her folder for a moment to hide her mouth. "I'll do that." She disappeared.

"Please don't assault my agents," Aldo told Lincoln in a dry tone. "They're hard enough to come by as it is." Lincoln's only response was to lift his shoulders into a shrug. To Michael and Sara both, Aldo went on, "As I said, there are showers and spare clothes."

Michael's shirt was still sticking to his back with dried sweat, the final mark of the trek through the desert that they had made earlier, and he had still never felt less like taking a break in his life. A glance at Sara told him that she was in the same place. Not while a potential end to this had entered into their landscape so swiftly, their very own secular miracle. Michael shook his head before his father could finish. "We're fine. Let's get on with it."

"What is this?" Sara said without further preamble, fumbling about in her purse until she located again the bronze key that was supposed to somehow set them all free and turn the nation onto its head. After having held her elbow and felt the way that she was trembling, Michael was amazed that she had even held out for that long. "What does it unlock that was worth my father's life?" And was worth an attempt on hers, Sara seemed to have forgotten. Michael certainly hadn't.

Aldo reached out and gently took the key from her. For a few seconds, Michael was not certain that she was going to let him have it, and she folded her arms over her chest again as soon as it was out of her reach. "That is the question," Aldo admitted, sounding vexed that he did not have a ready answer. Michael did not guess that such questions crept up on him regularly. "Before your father died, he received a recording. On it was both proof that Terrence Steadman was alive two weeks after your brother supposedly killed him, as well as a few more details that would make the president very unpopular in her reelection bid." As they all appeared shell-shocked, Aldo took a moment to let them all get used to the idea before he offered them a faint smile and continued. "I would not drag you back into danger for anything less than ending this once and for all."

Over Sara's head, Michael and Lincoln shared a look. For all that they seemed to have been operating on separate wavelengths for most of the trip northward again, driven in large part by the easy trust that Michael was granting Mahone based upon nothing more than a feeling, Michael knew that they were sharing a thought now: 'Yeah, you won't lead us into danger now. You had no problem doing it before.'

One more leap. Michael guessed that he had that in him. He inhaled deeply through his nose and only just fought back the urge to rub his hand over his head in frustration. Aldo went on, "Do you know what this key opens?"

Sara could not smother a small and disbelieving laugh before she shook her head. "No. No. I…I found his body, after he died, and the key fell from his pocket. I've never seen it before."

Aldo exhaled, clearly not liking that answer, but gestured for Sara to follow him through the house. Lincoln, LJ, and Michael all followed her without pausing to think about it; they were a unit now. "We'll work around that. Did your father have any hotels that he liked to stay in regularly, any favorite clubs?"

Sara paused in the middle of a living room that was as perfectly and lifelessly furnished as the rest of the house and looked stricken. Michael was reminded that her father's death had occurred not even a week before. She steeled herself before his eyes before she shook her head again and said, in a calm voice whose tremble was audible only to those who knew her well, "No. My father and I were able to reconcile before he died, but we still did not know very much about one another."

Aldo seemed to realize for the first time how his distant, matter of fact tone might have been unintentionally cruel, and his face softened. It seemed genuine. "I'm sorry about your father," he told her. "For what it's worth, we're cautious. The tape would not have been sent to him unless someone was sure that he would be willing to help."

"Thank you," Sara said. She did look as if it helped in some small way.

They followed Aldo into a study that differentiated from the rest of the house in one small way: it looked as if an actual person worked there. The rest of the house held an air as if someone had merely made a half-hearted attempt at making it look as if someone lived there, a museum piece on the habits of twenty-first century humans.

The study had an enormous oak desk on which a sleek laptop set, looking incongruous and modern against all of the careful age. Sitting at the desk was a black man who looked like a cross between accountant and male model, and nothing at all like a freedom fighter against the government. Between Monica and this new man, it would appear that the Company's opposite number was as adept at blending in as the conspiracy itself. The man leaned back in his chair when he noticed them there, gave a nod of greeting to Aldo, and watched Lincoln closely. "Monica told me that you guys startle easily," he said. "I'm Ben."

When all of the appropriate greetings had been exchanged, Ben looked towards Aldo again. "I'm bored," he said. "Tell me that you need something illegal, or at the very least interesting."

"It'll be all of the above before it's all over," Aldo said. "Pull up everything that you can find about Governor Tancredi. Everywhere where he spent money, everywhere he stayed, everywhere that he belonged." Ben nodded before he turned back to the laptop and began typing in a series of keystrokes. His fingers were nearly a blur. Aldo looked at his oldest son for a moment without speaking, before he added, "And find out where Veronica Donovan was heading before she died. I'd rather have the man himself under our control, too."

"Not a fan of the leap of faith?" Michael asked.

"No," Aldo replied solemnly before he went back to watching Ben work. "Not for a very long time."

End Part Eight


	9. Chapter 9

Part Nine

Jane was silent in the passenger seat. If she kept up that habit for the next few hours, then Alex thought that he might even come to like her. He noticed that his hands were clenched around the steering wheel only when his fingers began to ache, and even then it was difficult to stop. Jane watched every move that he made without pretending that she was doing otherwise, which Alex found that he in a strange way appreciated. The others made moves to hide it when he caught them. Even then, only Burrows watched him as if he understood that Alex was still someone dangerous, while Scofield and Tancredi alike pretended that everything was settled now and that Alex was on their side as a matter of course.

He wasn't. God help him, even after all of the words that he had snapped at Scofield about living up to his own rhetoric, even knowing that a redemption thrust aside was not likely to be offered again, it all depended upon what he found at the house.

In the passenger seat, Jane stirred abruptly. Given how chill and strange she had been thus far, Alex would not put it past her to be able to read minds. He glanced over. "What?"

"Nothing." Jane started to turn back towards the passenger side window, then made a liar out of herself a mere second later by adding, "I was thinking that you make a strange acquisition for the Company to pursue. They have been able to grow so large because they do not take foolish risks. They would not have approached you unless they were sure that they could at the very least keep you from going to the authorities with what you knew."

Alex ordered himself to stop gripping at the steering wheel so hard, or else he was going to have to allow Jane to drive the rest of the way to Durango and ask Tancredi to reset his fingers upon their return. "And I don't seem like enough of a thug?" he asked without turning his eyes away from the road. He could feel a tight smile beginning to hurt his face as he did so, a behavioral warning flag. Up to Jane now to decide whether or not she was going to heed it. He could feel her gaze against the side of his face.

"You don't," Jane stated calmly, either missing the thunderclouds that Alex was sending out or else deciding that she could weather whatever happened as a result. "Which means that you've hidden it well."

The SUV swerved alarmingly towards the shoulder as Alex remembered how the lye had burned the inside of his nose, how the sweat that had collected along his shoulders and down the line of his spine had felt cold even though it was already one of the hottest summers on record. Alex righted the SUV's course with a muttered curse and met Jane's wryly arched eyebrow. "Not so well as you think," Alex said.

Jane turned in her seat so that she could view the long streaks of rubber that Alex had left on the road before they disappeared over the horizon. Alex almost thought that he was seeing a hint of humor there. "Clearly," she said in a neutral tone as she settled back down again.

They passed the Durango city limits sign. Alex's foot came down harder against the gas pedal. At Jane's sideways glance, Alex gritted, "If we're pulled over, I'll show them my badge. It still means something." To anyone who did not know what he had spent the previous few weeks doing with it. Jane made a small and noncommittal sound from the back of her throat and continued to fix him with that chill and infuriatingly knowing stare. It made Alex feel a streak of the old viciousness that had plagued him during his trapped and claustrophobic adolescent years, visiting him so swiftly and so furiously that he might have been troubled by it if he had not already had so much else on his mind. He glanced Jane's way, made note of the cool plastic exterior that desperately needed to be shattered, and said, "And you? What nasty corpse did they use to drag you into this?" He had buried his beneath the birdbath in the backyard, but Jane looked more like a wood chipper and running water woman to him.

Jane started to flinch and turned the gesture into a tilt of her head at the last moment. Alex was gratified that he had even received that much of a reaction, and a little disturbed that he had even been driven to reach for it. He blew past the donut shop where he had taken Cameron for breakfast before school sometimes at a speed that made several people lay on their horns. Jane took all of this in as if she were watching something on television. If had not been traveling within the same SUV with her for the past few hours, then Alex would have missed how her face had gone marginally paler when he had snapped at her about corpses.

"I fit a series of psych profiles," Jane answered finally. She reached out so that she could brace herself against the dashboard as Alex took a corner so hard that the SUV was for a moment balanced on two wheels. She pressed her lips into a firm line, recovered, and went on, "All of my bodies were hidden by people other than myself."

"Must have been nice," Alex said. Even though his voice was so thick with sarcasm that he thought he tasted bile, Jane answered in all seriousness.

"It was not." Jane straightened and looked out at the houses that were flying by them. "You should slow down before you hit someone's child." It was only the second time that Alex had ever heard her express genuine concern, for anyone or any situation. He would have glanced over at her if he had not been so heavily occupied with keeping them on the road.

"There aren't any kids in this neighborhood," Alex replied, and barely grazed at the brakes as he came very close to displaying a few laws of physics, namely those concerning mass, to someone's Hyundai. A raised middle finger was his reward. The houses were all clean, professional space. Doug and Stacy had never been inclined towards reproducing.

Though he would not turn his head to look at her, Alex could feel her watching him. "Then why are we here?"

"Pam's phone was tapped." Alex did not like explaining even that much, even as he understood that if Jane was untrustworthy she would already know this. "I told her to go to her sister's."

Jane cringed as they took another turn at a speed that such a large vehicle was absolutely not meant to go when driven by someone of perhaps dubious sanity. "Then won't the Company be waiting for us, anyway?" The third time that she had betrayed concern. Jane sounded as if she was starting to wonder who she had gotten into a vehicle with, and how quickly she could get out again.

"Pam is an only child." And here Alex took a breath and stared out the windshield, because if Jane was not truly a member of the Company's opposite number, then what he was telling her now was jettisoning every chance that he had of getting Pam and Cameron out safely. "About a year and a half ago, I was pursuing an escaped prisoner named Oscar Shales. Rapist, murderer, really sadistic piece of work. This would not have made him all that special if not for the fact that he was also smart. Most criminals aren't." Alex could feel his fingers clenching yet again, and this time they did not want to obey his command and unclench. "He threatened my family, and I took him seriously. Pam and I worked out this signal, where if I called her and told her to go to her sister's, she was to pick up Cameron and go stay at the house of an old partner of mine, no questions asked." Alex could not feel Jane's expression but still did not think that he needed to glance over in order to know what her face must look like. It I had /I been a paranoid decision. Shales demanded that.

"Alex," Jane said abruptly. It was the first time that she had addressed him by any name at all, let alone his first one, and for a few seconds Alex was so startled that he was not sure what she was referring to. A sleek dark car, scarily similar to the one that Alex himself was currently driving, was parked in front of the house of the man that Alex had known since the both of them were at Quantico. Doug had never in his life driven a car that was not already at least five years old by the time that he bought it, and more often than not was covered in rust that looked like the spots on a dog. Alex slammed on the brakes so hard that he would have sent the both of them through the windshield if not for their belts. The car was well made and scarcely created a sound as the brakes locked and the vehicle came to a halt.

Alex knew that there was no way that Doug could be driving that car based upon many years of knowing the man. How Jane know, outside of a nearly miraculous burst of instinct, he could not say. Alex cast Jane a glance and found that she was already focused and intent, unbuckling her seatbelt and staring out the windshield with a hunter's expression. Alex supposed that he had no other choice but to take a leap of faith. If only he had not been getting such diminishing returns on those lately.

"Come on," Alex said abruptly. He grabbed for the gun that had been sitting on the center console for the duration of the trip, unspoken of but certainly not unnoticed, and exited the car. Jane's own gun was in a shoulder holster, but there was no around to see it. In broad daylight, she still moved like a ghost. Alex shut his door quietly when he wanted to slam it and instructed her, "Take the back."

Those gray, indifferent eyes could probably drive a person mad if they had already been given a few nudges in the right direction. Alex only gritted his teeth. "If we are too late," Jane inquired of him, "will you be all right left alone?"

Alex bared his teeth, decided to call it a smile, and again saw Jane flinch back before she was able to control herself. "If we are too late, then I won't be interested in hiding my bodies."

Jane inclined her head in understanding and disappeared around the side of the house. Even in the gathering dusk that should have been bringing professionals home from work, Alex doubted that she was seen. He took a breath and walked up the steps that he knew nearly as well as his own with the taste of bile sour in the back of his throat. The gun was an extension of his arm, and he could hear his own blood roaring through his ears.

Alex had felt like this, like a tether was being slipped off of him while he was half-rabid already and getting worse by the second, when he had had Shales in custody and the bastard had started whispering of all of the things that he would do to Pam, to Cameron, when he escaped again. They had both known that he would. Felt the same, knew what the consequences would be, and still could not bring himself to care. Alex's hand was steady as eh reached for the door and found that it was unlocked. Doug and Stacy were both highly attentive to security. It was a consequence of Doug's job.

Alex did not call out as he entered the house. It looked the same as it always did, a combination of the files from Stacy's law practice scattered over every available surface and the equipment from the sports that Doug played on weekends thrown into the corners. They were both indifferent housekeepers, but there was a subtle method to the madness that Alex had grown used to, and that did not appear to be disturbed now. Alex held his breath for several long seconds in the doorway, listening, even though he heard no sound. It was not until he was forced to exhale that he realized he could smell burning meat.

Gun drawn, Alex walked slowly towards the kitchen and the source of the smell. His mind was filling with dark possibilities that he could not dismiss, urging him to sprint even though he knew that it would be foolish. Oscar Shales would have used the full extent of his imagination to come up with the most creative and painful method of death possible. The Company would likely not. Death alone would be enough to send a message to their misbehaving pet without adding any embellishments. Alex was not in a mood to quibble about degree.

He placed his feet carefully and made no sound as he walked across the threshold of the kitchen. It was beginning to fill with smoke from the stove and the alarms would be going off soon, but none of Alex's darkest fears were proved true. No bodies sprawled across a stove that had been turned on high. No _parts_ of bodies, either. Alex did not realize how tense he had been until he released his breath on a long exhale. He did not relax as he reached out to turn off the stove and remove what looked like it had been ground hamburger before it had been forgotten and allowed to turn into charcoal. The act was purely reflexive; Alex doubted that Stacy was in any kind of position to care about the state of her kitchen.

As Alex was stepping out of the room, his eyes stinging and tearing from the smoke, he heard a thump from the direction of Doug and Stacy's bedroom that immediately sent a dead man's finger trailing down his spine. Could be Jane, he supposed. If all of the forces of the universe that had been aligned to come down wrong on him ever since that day last June suddenly decided to reverse direction at once, sure, it could absolutely be Jane. Alex touched again at the safety that he had disengaged before entering the house, just to be sure, and walked back into the living room with every hair on his body prickling at once. He was overdue for one of his pills; he heard Cameron crying and took a moment to realize that he was imagining the sound within his own head.

Alex's eyes were still burning and his vision was still clouded from the smoke when his shoes touched the living room carpet again. He saw the blurred figure from the corner of his eye, recognized it as male, and spun. Alex was raising his own gun to fire when he heard a clicking noise and threw himself to the side. His opponent must be new at the whole killing people thing, to not have disengaged the safety on his weapon from the moment that he had realized that he was not in the house alone, but Alex was not going to look a gift salvation in the mouth. Much better that the bullet slam into the couch than his own body. Alex struck the carpet hard and rolled behind an armchair to provide him with some cover, raising his own gun as he did so. Two more bullets struck the place where Doug had once tended to get pleasantly drunk watching football on Sunday afternoons, usually with Alex doing the same on the couch only a few feet away. Alex had no problem with throwing a few bullets back. The smoke had still not managed to entirely clear from his eyes, and Alex was realizing that the hours since he had entered the house had in reality been only minutes. One of his bullets struck the plaster wall only a few inches from his attacker's head. The second one entered the man's shoulder with a wet and somehow satisfying thunking sound. The man dropped down to the carpet with a cry.

At both of those sounds, Alex's legs needed no further command from his brain in order to leverage him back to his feet. Now, Alex noted in a clear and detached way, his gun hand was finally starting to shake.

Two women screamed his name. One shouted in a clear, authoritative voice, while the other's cracked and was cut off halfway through. Alex ignored Jane and turned towards the sound of the second, towards Pam. Gasping and struggling to staunch the bleeding in his shoulder with one hand, the same man who had tired to kill Alex only a few seconds before tried to kill him again. Alex was faster. His gun boomed in his hand at the same time that Jane's did. One of their bullets took the man through the wrist, nearly severing the hand, and the other went directly into his temple. Alex had no idea which one of them fired the fatal shot. His mind was so filled with a black, buzzing mixture of rage and panic that he would later not be aware of having point the weapon at all.

"Come on!" he finally bellowed at Jane in a voice that he hardly recognized, and did not wait to see if she would obey. For that matter, neither did he care that he was announcing his exact location in the house to anyone who cared to shoot him through the door. Alex kicked it open so hard that it rebounded off the far wall. The only thing that kept it from coming back on him was that one of the hinges broke from the force of the impact. He did not remember doing that, either; when his foot ached later and his ankle was swollen, he would stare at his limb in faint amazement.

Pam was on the bed. Alex's eye found her almost immediately, ignoring the three others in the room, two men and one woman, and the guns that were being thrust into his face. He ignored the way that he could see Stacy's foot, sans shoe, sticking out from one side of the bed, could see Doug on the other side with most of his brains lying outside of his head, but Pam was on the bed.

Pam was on the bed, and she was lying down even though this was the last possible time in which someone would want to take a nap. Alex had known Doug for twenty years and Stacy for fifteen and neither one of them had owned a set of red sheets in their lives, but it was Pam, Pam was so still and so small, and Alex could not breathe.

The spell broke with an audible popping noise in Alex's ears. He did not wait until he had drawn to breathe again, not even sure that he could, before he raised the gun. Three gun barrels were as large as eclipses in his line of fire, and Alex did not care. There was a booming noise from behind him. Alex _swore_ that he could feel the heat of the bullet leaving a mark against the side of his neck as it flew past him, before the forehead of one man developed a neat hold in the front while the back exploded like a ripe melon. His male partner flinched away before he could stop himself, sending his shot wild and into the wall. Possessed as he was by this sharp and terrible/beautiful rage that was making everything appear crystalline and clear, Alex's aim stayed true. The man dropped to the carpet with a gurgling hole opened up in his throat. The woman decided then that the purchasing power of her courage was not nearly enough and spun towards the window. Jane dropped her before she could get more than two steps.

Alex glanced over his shoulder and saw that Jane still had both of her arms extended out in front of her, as if she did not know how to lower them again. Alex was slowly relearning to breathe, and each attempt whistled in his throat. He stepped towards the bed and got halfway there before he abruptly doubled over and dry-heaved so hard that he tasted bile and was sure that he would spit out his own fillings.

"Don't drop your weapon," Jane said behind him in a sharp voice as Alex braced his hands against his knees.

"I wouldn't dream of it." Alex made it to the bed without collapsing and then leaned heavily against the mattress once he got there. Pam's face had not even started to go pale yet. They must have killed her mere seconds before Alex had entered the room, when there had been so many gunshots flying about that to pull the sound of one alone out the fray would have been impossible. The bullet hole in the center of her forehead was very neat compared to all of the blood that was spreading out beneath her.

Alex was breathing very hard, aware that he was on the verge of hyperventilating and not anywhere near a state of mind where he would have been able to care, hearing his own pulse thundering so hard that it hurt within his ears. He had not felt like this when he had killed Shales, and he wanted that feeling back, desperately. He was going to need it. He had agreed to join Scofield's cause grudgingly, understanding both that his Pam and Cameron were never going to be truly safe while he consented to have the Company boot pressed upon his neck and that he could only continue to tear his soul into pieces for so long before there would not be enough left to constitute a person any longer, but it had been a choice born of calculation rather than passion. Alex fisted his hand through the sheets that his ex wife was lying on and thought that this was no longer going to be a problem.

Jane's footfalls sounded softly on the carpet behind him. After watching her slip off as quietly and unobtrusively as a ghost-_God_-less than ten minutes before, Alex thought that she was doing it deliberately, so as not to startle him. He was in no mood to appreciate. "Alex," Jane said.

While the use of his first name had rankled before, Alex now only said in a dull voice, "My son's not here." Neither was a body, but Alex was in no mood to take small comforts.

Turning, Alex saw that Jane looked uncertain for perhaps the first time since he had met her. "The police will be arriving shortly," she began.

"I don't care," Alex snapped back. Jane's eyes narrowed, and for a moment it looked as if they were going to waste the small window of time that they had by having an argument, until Alex heard the sound of a snuffing sigh from beneath the bed. He had dropped to his knees before he even remembered giving himself the command to do so. One leg of his trousers was immediately soaked in blood. Who it actually belonged to, Alex could not say. He leaned down, lifted the bedcover to the side, and found the stricken and tear-streaked face of his son. Cameron was too far away to be reached immediately, which was the only reason that he was not seized and held against Alex's chest.

He swallowed hard to push the buzzing aside and said, "Hey, Cam. Listen, buddy, we have to leave pretty quickly now, so how about you come over here?"

"Where's Mommy?" Cameron asked without coming any closer. It had been years since had last sucked his thumb, but Cameron had shoved his entire fist into his mouth and was gnawing on his knuckles so hard that he would soon be drawing blood.

Alex glanced upwards towards the bed before he could stop himself and cursed inwardly as he saw Cameron follow the gesture. "She had to go away," he told Cameron, and struggled not to be sick. "She didn't want to." Cowardly, perhaps, but now was not the time to find out how much his son really understood about death. Maybe he would have a better idea if he had been around for the past year. It was not the time to think about that now, either.

Jane made an impatient sound from the doorway. Alex threw an ugly look over his shoulder and then said to Cameron, "It's okay, buddy, I'm here now."

It was the breaking point. Cameron made a strangled noise and wriggled across the space that separated them, hurling himself into Alex's arms as soon as he was clear. Alex clutched his son to him harder than he had ever thought of gripping the steering wheel and rose to his feet. There was someone else's blood sliding down his shin. Alex lowered his lips to Cameron's hair while Jane discreetly looked away to give them a moment of privacy.

Cameron started to look towards the bed, but Alex grabbed his face and turned it quickly against Alex's own neck. "No, Cam. Don't look."

"May we leave now?" Jane asked. There was no malice in her tone. It did not stop Alex from glaring at her and wishing, just for a moment, that he could strike her dead.

"Yes," he said. "We can go." He took a final look behind him at the bodies of Pam and of two of his closest friends and felt again that rage rising inside of him, strange that it should be so hot and so black at the same time. Only the fact that he had Cameron in his arms kept it from boiling over.

They reached the lawn and the SUV as the first sirens could be heard several blocks over. Jane held her hand out without speaking for the keys; that Alex would not be driving was not even a question. Alex handed them over without saying anything and climbed into the passenger seat with Cameron in his arms. His son was shaking so badly that if it were not for Alex holding onto him he would have tumbled to the floorboard. As he lowered his lips to Cameron's hair again, Alex realized that his own hands were none too steady.

Jane began to murmur to herself as she pulled the vehicle away from the curb. It took Alex several moments to realize that she was praying, and even then he could not tell whether she was requesting grace on behalf of the living or the dead.

End Part Nine


	10. Chapter 10

Part Ten

Life as a fugitive, it turned out, made one become unused to luxury very quickly. Michael felt a wry smile touching at the corners of his mouth as he wandered through the living room again and noted how perfect it was, how very chill. The flaw was in the occupation rather than the design, for the house had clearly been designed by someone who understood the effects of light and space. Michael still felt as if his skin did not quite fit right as he strode to and fro among the expensive furniture. He had been a prisoner in Fox River for less than two months and on the run for far less than that. Before his incarceration, he had not been ludicrously wealthy, but he had had a spacious apartment, a savings account that he was added to rather than depleted every month, and several pieces of furniture that would have made for two months rent or more when he was a child. Yet still, the house was making him feel vaguely awkward and out of place, and setting him longing for the sun and free space of the place that he had set up in Panama.

It would seem that Michael was a far different man now than he had been before his incarceration, and not merely because his feet were no longer symmetrical. It was something to think about, when he had the time for it. Michael raised his eyes towards the room that he had left only a few moments before after finding that he was not contributing anything useful to the process (a sensation that he was neither used to nor appreciated). Maybe he would even have time for it sooner than he had anticipated.

Michael smiled to himself again and turned as he heard a sound behind him, already knowing that it was going to be Sara. She had excused herself long enough to take that offered shower shortly after the investigations into her father had begun, almost eagerly. Michael thought that this might be her way of respecting his privacy, honoring the dead now when she had not been able to stay and do so properly at a funeral. She had twisted her hair back into a damp bun at the base of her neck from which damp tendrils escaped to frame her face, and she was wearing loose-fitting, borrowed clothes while her own went through a cycle in the house's washer and dryer. The bruises on her face looked fainter by virtue of being brought back into the embrace of civilization.

"Hey," Sara said, crossing her arms over her chest for a moment before she remembered herself and dropped them again. There was still a distance between them that was growing for reasons that Michael could not name. It had started just when he swore that he could feel it closing again. Sara glanced over her shoulder at the study and then quirked her eyebrows at him when she turned back around again. It was a cute gesture, and it made Michael for a moment forget. "Lincoln is the one watching the computer, and you're the one out here. Something doesn't seem right."

"Needed a break," Michael admitted.

Sara looked startled to hear it, and it truth Michael was startled to hear himself say it. At long last, she said, "I'm starving, and I'm not in the mood to ask permission. You want?"

Michael had not eaten since the day before. His tight, rigid focus on the task at hand had kept him from feeling any of the effects as more than a distant background hum. "Sure," he said.

Sara seemed to take a certain glee in rooting through a stranger's kitchen. It made Michael wonder at the other person that she could be, the one that was so radically different from both the woman in Fox River and the girl in her yearbook picture. For all that she had said that she was hungry, she appeared to be craving caffeine even more, for she went through all of the cabinets until she located coffee before she even glanced at the refrigerator. While Sara was looking at the coffee maker in order to figure out how it worked, Michael ran his fingers across the soft flesh that she had exposed to him on the nape of her neck.

"How do you feel about Panama?" Michael asked her when she had figured out the coffee maker's secrets and pressed the appropriate buttons with a flourish.

"Thought we already went over that plan, Michael," Sara said, but one corner of her mouth lifted up. They were still not used to flirting with one another; it was like an intricate dance when neither one of them quite knew the steps.

"Not to run," Michael said, warming by the second to the idea that this might really be an option now. "To vacation." He stepped closer, wrapped his arms around her from behind, and felt her stiffen for a few seconds before she relaxed and leaned into him. "I'll buy you a floppy hat and a drink with an umbrella in it."

Sara grinned and tilted her head back so that she could look him in the eyes. "Only if you promise to put zinc on your nose," she told him solemnly. "You owe me the image."

Michael let out a startled laugh. "Deal," he told her, thinking that at the moment they were nothing more than a guy and his girl, making plans for the future that they were undoubtedly going to have together. It was a nice change of pace. Sara tilted her head back until Michael thought that it would be very nice to kiss her.

Over the sound of the coffee maker gurgling, neither one of them heard Lincoln in the doorway until he cleared his throat. Michael startled as he looked over, but did not let go of Sara. Lincoln was wearing an expression that Michael would have had to punch him in the arm over if they had both still been kids. "Yes?" he asked.

Lincoln ticked his head back in the direction of the study. "You want to see this," he said. As Michael released Sara and walked past Lincoln, his brother lifted his eyebrows and grinned in such a way that made Michael think that he was still going to need to punch Lincoln, regardless.

Aldo was smiling, nearly grinning, for the first time since Michael had known him as he and Sara reentered the room with Lincoln. "Your father opened up a safe deposit box one week before he died," he informed her.

Sara's face paled for a few seconds before she could answer, as it did every time that someone mentioned her father, but she gathered herself and said, "This isn't a safe deposit key."

"No," Aldo said. "It belongs to a club in Chicago that your father has belonged to for the last fifteen years, but it still tells us where he was coming from before he died. Seems like an odd place for a man to make a casual pit stop if he found himself in the middle of a conspiracy."

"And the safe deposit box?" Sara asked.

Aldo's attempt at sparing Sara's feelings when he spoke of her father always rang with an awkward kind of sincerity, as if he had spent so much time around people who had no use for such emotional tethers that he was now having to construct the appropriate responses from memory. "It's an anomaly. That's worth checking it out."

Sara nodded, but she looked as if her mind was far away and the reaction was more a matter of reflex than of thought. Michael put his hand upon Sara's shoulder and squeezed, ignoring Lincoln, before he said, "Back into the lion's den." Where it started was where it could end. There was a neat kind of symmetry to that.

"Half of us, anyway," Lincoln said. His voice was a rumbling rasp, as if it was all that he could do to keep his emotions under control that long. Michael looked at him, then at his father, waiting for an explanation. Monica was nowhere to be seen, while Ben was striking at keys aimlessly and looking as if he would love an excuse to exit what was clearly a family affair.

"Veronica flew into Blackfoot, Montana the day before she died," Aldo said in a low voice. Hostage negotiators would use such a tone. "While President Reynolds purchased a large, remote estate just outside of Great Falls before Terrence Steadman supposedly died."

Michael exhaled and understood why Lincoln was struggling so hard to keep himself under control. "The perfect place to hide a dead man. No one around to look."

Aldo grinned, the first time that Michael had ever seen him do so. "Exactly. Half of us can go to get the recording that Governor Tancredi was killed over, and the other half can bring a dead man back to life." Michael was even willing to forgive the hyperbole, as he was feeling much the same urge even after he had only found himself embroiled in the conspiracy for a matter of months rather than decades. "We can go over separate ways tonight and meet at a neutral point when it's done."

Michael started to nod, no matter how eerie he found it that he was agreeing with his father to such a large degree, before he remembered that there were now other people with their own stakes in this. "After Alex gets back," he said. "This is his fight now, too." That was quite aside from the fact that, since he had been so good at dogging Michael's heels since Fox River, Michael would not mind seeing a master at work while he pursued someone else.

Sara and Lincoln were both watching him, Michael discovered. He ignored each stare, one because he knew what it meant and they had already had that conversation in the desert, and the other because he did not.

The front door opened and two sets of steps could be heard in the entryway. Alex Mahone also had a way with timing. Michael turned away from Sara and his brother both and went to meet Mahone, as well as Pam and the son that he had not yet met. He noticed that there were only two sets of steps when there ought to have been four; however, still flush with the realization that the conspiracy could be brought crashing down to the earth in a matter of days, he decided that Jane must be dealing with the car while either Mahone or Pam carried the child. It was late, after all.

He was half-right, and when he saw how horribly wrong he had been on the rest Michael froze in his tracks. Jane looked tired, with dark circles beneath her eyes and flecks of what Michael suspected was a mixture of blood and gunpowder marring the dove gray of her blouse and the white of her throat. Mahone-Alex, Michael corrected himself as he realized that relying on surnames when Alex was clearly now embedded into this mess as deeply as Michael and Lincoln themselves was ridiculous. Alex looked _wrecked_. There were lines on his face that had not been there when he had left only hours before, a sheen of sweat on his forehead and a tremble in his hands that Michael noticed right away. The hands themselves were occupied with holding a small boy of no more than five or six against Alex's chest. The boy himself had his face shoved so firmly into Alex's neck and, if the awkward way that Alex was canting his head to one side to make room for him was any indication, had been keeping it there for some time.

Though Alex was not limping, one entire leg of his trousers had been soaked with blood from the knee down. It had dried to a dark and rusty red. When Alex paused and met Michael's eyes over the top of his son's head, Michael thought that he was being given some glimpse into how that blood might have gotten there.

Monica materialized from wherever she gone in order to avoid the family drama so that she and Jane could retreat out of earshot and carry on a low, whispered conversation. Michael thought that he heard the word 'graves' being said before Monica nodded and disappeared again. She passed Aldo and shared a significant look with him as she went. Everyone in the house had drifted towards the entryway to witness Alex and Jane's return, and everyone was wearing identical expressions of shock and horror.

Michael stepped close to Alex out of some desire to keep their conversation private. He would not want to relive whatever it was that had happened in Durango in front of a crowd, and he and Alex were the same person to such a large and eerie degree, separated by a decade and a half and a few details of personal history, that Michael could not help but think it would be the same.

"Are you all right, Alex?" he asked.

Alex let out a long sigh and stroked at his son's hair. Michael liked neither the trembling in Alex's hands nor the look in his eye, which said that Durango had been such a brutal crucible that it had left only the hardest essence of the man behind. Whether than man was essentially good or essentially bad was not a question that Alex seemed particularly inclined to ask at the moment. He rolled his eyes at Michael instead. "Scofield, for someone who is supposed to be off of the charts, that is the single stupidest thing that I have ever heard you ask." Against his father's neck, the boy whose face Michael still had not seen stirred. Michael tried to imagine a five year-old with Alex's black and acerbic sense of humor, realized how much of it must have been developed by necessity as much as by nature, and was saddened.

"I meant physically," he said.

Alex met Michael's eyes long enough for some of the man to come back into them. "We're both fine," he said.

Sara was on the opposite side of the room one moment and right beside Alex and Michael the next. Michael experienced a dizzying moment in which he realized that he had not seen her move. He was accustomed to being hyperaware of Sara in every room that she happened to be in. She held her arms out for Alex to hand his son over and ignored the disbelieving glare that he received in return.

"I just want to make sure that he's not hurt," Sara said.

"We're fine," Alex repeated, though the twist of his mouth said that he at the very least understood how arguable that statement was.

Sara's level stare did the same thing. "With respect, Agent Mahone," she said in a crisp, professional tone that reminded Michael of the times in Fox River when Sara had known that he was up to something but had not been able to put the pieces together, "you yourself may be in no condition to tell. I _did_ go to school for this."

Alex made a sighing sound that might have been much more about preparation for further argument than it was about actual defeat and seemed to notice for the first time the blood that had soaked his leg. His face went even paler as his Adam's apple worked up and down. "Fine," he gritted, and began to pull his son away from his neck so that Sara could take him. The boy cried and pushed his face further against Alex's neck. Alex's expression as he stroked at his son's hair made Michael want to look away in deference to a private moment where he was neither wanted nor needed. "Hey, hey, Cam, it's all right, buddy," he said into his son's hair. "I'm here now, I'm not going anywhere else, it's okay. This lady's a doctor. She's going to make sure that you're okay."

Cameron muttered something indistinguishable against Alex's neck, but Michael thought that he heard the word 'Mommy'. He looked towards the floor and realized that everyone else was doing the same.

"I wish she was here, too," Alex said. He reached up and gently disentangled Cameron's arms from around his neck, placing them around Sara's instead. The boy clung to her immediately, as if he could not bear any moment when he was denied human contact. Even Sara looked surprised. "But Dr. Tancredi's nice. She'll take care of you." Alex's eyes over Cameron's head promised that she had better.

Sara did not seem fazed by this, realizing that it was far more about whatever had happened while Alex was away than it was about Sara herself. She rubbed a soothing circle against Cameron's back that made Cameron burrow even harder against her before she suggested, in a gentle voice of the sort that she might use on a dog that was pacing back and forth and still deciding whether or not it wanted to be hostile, "I know that you don't want to let Cameron out of your sight, but it might clear your head if you clean up first."

Michael was certain that Alex would have disagreed had Aldo not finished listening to Aldo's swift debriefing of everything that had happened in Durango and said, "Actually, I'd like to ask you a few questions."

Alex held up a single finger and did not speak for several seconds. The digit silenced Aldo as easily as if Alex had drawn a gun. "You," Alex said in a ragged voice. "You do not want to talk to me right now." He started to walk away, paused, and came back to touch Cameron on the back of the neck. "I'm going to clean up real fast, buddy. Dr. Tancredi will look after you." Cameron said something unintelligible again, prompting Alex to say, "Good boy" before he turned towards the hall.

"Go after him, Michael," Sara said in a low voice. She was wearing her hooded eyes.

Michael did not ask how Sara thought that he could help Alex, or how she knew that Alex needed company rather than solitude at all. It would have been a foolish question; Michael had realized some time before that Alex was himself, or how he would be if the mirror had being held over a flame first. He nodded once before he followed Alex into the shadows of the hall. Aldo could get his full debriefing from Jane if he needed it so badly.

Every moment and every step that took him away from his son seemed to leech the control away from Alex and render him nearly feral instead. By the time that Michael entered what looked to be a spare bedroom behind him, he was wondering if he had really made an altogether wise decision at all. Alex was jerking his tie off in such hard, hurried movements that it was a small miracle that he had managed not to strangle himself. Michael wondered if Alex would not really like to be strangling several other people instead, perhaps starting with Michael himself. He had been like that on a few other isolated occasions in the short period of time that Michael had known him. The cage within the factory, the backseat of the stolen car. Neither of these things said that a good explanation for the blood and for the fact that Alex was notably absent an ex-wife would be coming.

Michael paused in the doorway and cleared his throat so that Alex would know that he was there, on the same logic that would lead him to alert a wounded animal to his presence before he tried to approach. The look that Alex threw him at the sound said that this had perhaps been the first wise decision that he had made since he had decided to follow Alex down the hall at all. Michael's eyes were drawn towards the blood that had soaked Alex's leg again and again. Alex looked good for a man who had been wearing the same rumpled suit for the previous two days, good in ways that made Michael's pulse quicken before he even realized that he had been looking, but he could not stop staring at the blood.

"Scofield," Alex began when he realized that the power of his glare alone was not going to be enough to make Michael turn and vanish the way that he had come. The voice was wrong, if he thought that it was going to act as a companion to his facial expression. It was his betrayer; it told a story of how hard Alex was having to fight in order to stay on his feet at all. "If you think that you are some improvement upon your father-"

No, Michael did not imagine that any member of the Burrows/Scofield family drama that was rapidly reaching the proportions of an epic Greek tragedy was a welcome sight to Alex right now. Unfortunately, a mixture of his own actions and things that had merely spun out of control while he was in the vicinity-Michael could sympathize-had sunk him as deeply into this as any of them. And Sara had been right. Michael watched the barely-controlled violence in the way that Alex threw his tie aside and knew that he did not need to be left alone.

"What happened?" Michael asked as he left the door and stepped further into the lion's den. He did not think that this lion in particular was inclined to bite, but he could not be sure.

Alex had a laugh that sounded as if he had been swallowing charcoal. It hurt Michael's ears. "And you're supposed to be the genius," Alex muttered in such a low voice that Michael wondered for a second which one of them was being addressed. "I didn't get there in time."

"Pam's dead," Michael finished. He had suspected ever since Alex had come through the door without the woman by his side, but had also needed to hear Alex say it, however much Alex's subtle flinch said that he did not appreciate it.

"Yes," Alex gritted. Finished with his tie, he began working on the buttons of his shirt before he turned an eyebrow Michael's way. "I'm taking a shower, and then I am going to see my son. If you plan on standing there and watching the entire time, do not think that that is going to be a deterrent." The charcoal grief in Alex's voice gave it a rasp that warmed Michael's blood, caused an undercurrent of danger and something else that made the air in the room crackle and twist.

Blithely strip in the bedroom where the door was still standing entirely open? From the man who had worn his tie for the previous two days and long after it had ceased to be comfortable, Michael doubted it, but that wasn't the point and even Alex must surely know that. Alex needed a target, and he couldn't get at the ones that he really wanted. Michael was providing proximity. He answered the challenge by calmly shutting the door behind him and watching Alex's eyebrow go up even higher.

"All right," Michael said, and was rewarded with a mirthless chuckle as Alex called his bluff and continued to work on the buttons of his shirt. He was lean and fit; it took Michael a moment to remember that this was not the point. "I'm sorry," he said to Alex's revealed back and watched as the muscles of the other man's shoulders contracted.

"I know that you are," Alex said in a low voice that Michael had to come closer in order to hear. Though he was moving silently, he though that Alex was still able to sense his presence, for the shoulders twitched again. "You say it often enough. It doesn't actually change the situation."

No, Michael thought, it didn't, but he could not stop thinking of Pam, or of Sara's father, or even of T-Bag's potential and actual victims. He was still adjusting to how the ripples caused by his actions could extend so far. "I'm working on that," he said.

Alex turned to look at him, finishing shrugging off his shirt, his eyes written large with pupil. Michael tasted that danger again and could not bring himself to care. He wondered if this was how Lincoln felt on a daily basis, seeing the potential consequences looming large and unable to bring himself to give a damn. If so, he was starting to understand.

"Scofield," Alex said in an even lower and hoarser voice, sounding as if he was on the verge of saying something else, before he shook his head once, hard, and brought his mouth down onto Michael's. He did not ask permission before he parted Michael's lips with his tongue and plumbed the inside of his mouth, creating long, hard sparks of I want /I that would have taken Michael's breath away if he had been altogether interested in breathing at all. He could not say that he had been taken by surprise, as his lips had been parted from the second that he had seen Alex inclining his head, but the situation itself, his own lack of resistance was something that Michael had to take a moment or two to acclimate himself to. Michael put his hand on the back of Alex's neck and pulled him sharply closer so that he could intensify their contact, heard Alex growl against his mouth in response. He was kissing Michael as if he somehow thought that Michael ought to be punished for what had happened in Durango, nearly drawing blood and causing Michael to grunt in a mixture of pleasure and pain. It was all transference, anyway; Michael did not hold it against him. He twined his fingers more tightly through Alex's hair and tugged, felt Alex's pulse through his ribcage when Michael laid his other hand flat against Alex's chest. He thought about Sara, swore that he tasted the bitter-sharp tang of transferred grief in his mouth and could not quite convince himself that this was impossible, thought about dark halves and funhouse mirrors, realized that none of this fit. Blood was rushing away from his head, and he needed desperately to breathe.

Michael jerked his head away from Alex's finally and felt his lips burning. By some mutual agreement, their foreheads were still resting against one another. Michael had to think for a moment before he remembered how to unclench his fingers, and he realized that he was having difficulty remembering how long ago it was that he had felt this sharp pull of rightness when he was with another person independently of what logic said that he ought to feel. The last one was trying to heal Alex's son only a few rooms away. Michael took a breath.

"Take a shower," he instructed Alex as he stepped away. "You'll feel better."

If Alex was feeling the same violent twist of divided emotions that Michael was certain must be written large across his own face, then he was hiding it well. His pupils had returned to their normal size as he stepped back and nodded. Without the dilation, there was nothing to mute that chill and penetrating blue. "Tell Dr. Tancredi that I'll be out in a few minutes," he said before he paused and, first inclining his head towards Michael in a gesture that could nearly be called courteous, disappeared into the bathroom. Michael exited to the sound of water running.

End Part Ten


	11. Chapter 11

Part Eleven

Sara watched as Michael disappeared after Agent Mahone and took a breath before she shifted Cameron on her hip. He was already making her arms ache, but she was not sure that she would be able to untangle his arms from around her neck without strangling herself. She stroked at Cameron's hair and made a soft shushing sound as she turned away. Now was perhaps the worst possible time for random surges of hormones and subsequent jealousy to come up. Sara liked to believe that she and Michael had moved on from that at least a little bit since the two of them had left Fox River.

Sara continued to hold Cameron until she had walked over to the lovely couch, reasoning that she did not mind marring it with a little blood. The boy did not want to let go over her neck even though they had met only a few moments before and Cameron was not in any condition for introductions to stick. Sara eventually settled for keeping Cameron in her lap so that he could maintain contact with her while she tilted his face up and surveyed him in the better light. Cameron's eyes were reacting to the lamps and to her presence normally, but Sara still did not like his lack of affect. There was a small cut running through his eyebrow from which a trickle of blood had dried, only to break open again when he had been transferred from one pair of arms to the other. Sara could see something glittering within the wound that she would have to deal with, but for now she was more concerned with his psychological state.

"Cameron?" she asked him as she released his chin. He lowered it of his own accord and began to rub briskly at his eyes, causing Sara to release her breath on a relieved sigh. She pulled his hand back down as he came close to disturbing the wound before she could pull the glass out. "Your daddy told you who I was before he gave you over to me. Do you remember what he said?"

"Dr. Tancredi." Cameron came out of the last remains of his fugue state so that he could flash her the kindergartner's version of an irritated stare.

Sara broke into a relieved smile. "Good. Do you remember what happened before your daddy came to get you?"

Cameron snuck a look at her face before he dipped his chin and began to play with the hem of his shirt. "My mommy came and got me and said that we had to go to Doug and Stacy right away." His voice dropped. "She was scared. We stayed with Doug and Stacy, but then when it started to get dark those people came. Everyone knew who they were but me." Sara was listening so hard and was so horrified as a result that it took her several seconds to realize that Cameron had begun to shake. It was soon so hard that Sara could feel it all the way into her shoulder. She looked up and saw a group of faces sharing her expression. Only Jane and Aldo appeared relatively unmoved, making Sara wonder if the two of them had already either seen or lived this scenario before.

"I think they hurt my mommy. Daddy wouldn't let me see her," Cameron finished. His voice was still level and relatively calm, but he was now shaking so hard that Sara had to hold him hard in order to keep him from tumbling off of her lap and down to the floor.

"Okay," Sara breathed as she stroked at Cameron's hair and tried to gather her thoughts. A great many heartbreaking cases had either walked or been carried into her infirmary during her tenure at Fox River, and she had learned to harden herself out of necessity at the same time that she made weekly desperate pleas in Warden Pope's office to get as many of them transferred to Ad Seg as possible. Adult men and children that she could still balance on her lap were not the same thing. Sara tightened her grip as Cameron began to slide from her lap yet again and looked Aldo in the eye. She had cried for two hours the first time that a patient died on her, until her attending had found her, nearly shaken her, and told her that she was a mechanic and sometimes machines failed. She would burn out before she was thirty-five if she could not find a way to on some level believe that.

It has not a truth to which Sara had ever been able to fully commit herself, but she still heard her attending's voice emerging from her mouth as she asked Aldo, "How much of a fortress is this place?" When Aldo looked only confused, she elaborated, "When you go out and play cops and robbers with the bad guys, surely you get hurt sometimes. How much are you prepared to deal with here, medically speaking, before you have no choice but to risk a hospital?"

"Everything up to a bad bullet wound," Aldo answered.

"Good. I need surgical need and thread, Topicaine or something very similar, and Ativan," Sara said. Aldo evidenced no confusion as to what any of the items that she had requested were and didn't ask any questions about the final one, for which Sara was grateful. She had enough on her mind as it was.

As much as she could not bring herself to take her old attending's advice and view the people that she was trying to put back together again as machines, there were times when Sara would not mind being one herself.

Aldo returned with everything that she had asked for, plus a bottle of water. So he had fully understood her. Sara ignored the looks of Lincoln and LJ as she eyeballed Cameron in order to get a rough guess of his body weight and then shook out the appropriate dose of sedative into her palm. She held the pill up to Cameron's lips and, when he took it from her, followed it up with a sip of the water. "There you go. That's going to make you sleepy, so don't get scared when you start having trouble keeping your eyes open. It's going to help you sleep without nightmares." Cameron was likely going to have enough of them once the sedative wore off, and probably for awhile. Let him have the chemical substitute for peace this once. Even Sara could recognize that there were times when it was needed.

"I want my daddy," Cameron said as he took the bottle from her and proceeded to drink half of its contents at one long gulp. Sara marked down an interest in food and drink on her mental list of encouraging signs.

"Your daddy's going to come back very soon." Because he needed to clean what looked like an entire person's worth of blood off of himself first. Sara decided then that she never wanted to know the full details of what had happened in that house in Durango. She had seen enough through her own experiences of what the Company did with people who had become inconvenient to them in order to fill in all of the blanks herself.

Cameron's shaking had by then dwindled down to trembling, but Sara still kept one arm wrapped around him in case he should be beset by another round as she wet some gauze and began gently cleaning the blood from his face. It was only a matter of moments before Cameron's breathing became both deeper and slower and his eyelids drifted down to half-mast. By the time that Sara had finished cleaning all of the blood away so that she could see the shard of glass (she had dark images of exploding picture frames and flying shrapnel that she could not dislodge) she thought that she might even be able to pull the glass out and stitch him up before he realized what she was doing.

"This is going to feel a little bit cold when I first put it on you," Sara said as she first slid on a latex glove and then uncapped the Topicaine so that she could squirt out a dab onto her finger. "Then the skin around your eyebrow will start to feel a little funny. Don't touch it, it will make your fingers numb." As Cameron did not answer her and was looking sleepier by the minute, Sara pressed, "Cameron, can you hear me?"

"Yeah, okay, no touching." Cameron sounded as if he was answering her from somewhere a long ways away, and he followed it up by immediately trying to rub at his eye again.

Sara pulled his hand back down automatically and resettled him in her lap before she began smoothing the anesthetic into the skin around the wound. Cameron flinched at the first touch of her finger as she accidentally jostled the glass, but sedative's effects were becoming more pronounced by the moment and Sara thought that he might even slump over asleep in her arms before she was done. Sara gave the Topicaine a few more minutes to work, just to be sure, before she rooted in the kit that Aldo had brought for her. It took only seconds to find a set of tweezers. Sara sterilized them with alcohol before she said to Cameron, "You going to feel me pushing down on your eyebrow, but it shouldn't hurt. Tell me if it does, Cameron, all right?"

The use of Cameron's name pulled him out of his haze long enough to get him to nod sleepily. Sara was still not sure that he understood, rather than simply offering up an automatic response. She supposed that she would have to rely on the typical five year-old's tolerance for pain to let her know when she was going too deep. Sara tilted Cameron's chin up so that he was facing the best possible light and inserted the tweezers into the cut at his eyebrow so that she could get the glass that she could still see glittering there. Cameron did not so much as flinch as Sara found a good grip on the glass and then pulled it out. It was larger than Sara had guessed when she had first noticed it, and it released a new, sluggish flow of blood once it was free. Sara held a fresh piece of gauze to Cameron's eyebrow with one hand and set both the tweezers and the glass to the side with the other. Cameron hung onto her arm in order to keep his balance.

"Cool," LJ breathed as he stared down at the bloodied glass. Sara thought that he might be on the verge of reaching out and touching it.

"Stay in school and become a doctor," Sara said. Whereas several hours before she might have added a qualifier such as 'if this is all over by then', she felt no such urge now. The return of Agent Mahone, Jane, and Cameron, all three of them splattered with one amount of blood or another, had done nothing to diminish the essential weight of Ben's discoveries: _it could still be over_. To Cameron, Sara went on, "I'm going to stitch your eyebrow closed now. You'll feel pressure again, but I need you to tell me if it begins to hurt."

At Cameron's sleepy nod, Sara sterilized a needle and threaded it before she stitched up the cut running through Cameron's eyebrow in a few swift and sure strokes. It took less than a minute before she was tying off the end of the thread and clipping it short. As she did so, she raised her head on chance to see Michael go storming down the hall and back into the study where Ben was still shielding himself from the family drama under the auspice of working. Michael did not so much as glance at any of them as he passed.

Sara pushed down on the sudden tight feeling that rising in her chest and said to Cameron, "You're all done." Cameron mumbled something about 'Daddy' again, but he was so far gone that whatever he was trying to say was rendered unintelligible. Sara had to wrap her arm around his waist again the very next second so that she would slide to the floor and crack his head against the coffee table on the way down. "He'll be here very soon." Sara pushed the first aid kit to the side so that she could stand and lay Cameron back down on the couch. He turned over onto his side and crossed over into sleep immediately. Sara looked around for a blanket with which to cover Cameron, only to have one handed to her by Aldo.

"Thank you," she said, startled. All of the information that she had on Aldo Burrows came by way of Michael, and there was very little of it that was flattering.

Aldo saw the look that flickered across her face and lowered his voice before he released the blanket and said, "Orphaning children was never a part of my plan, Dr. Tancredi."

'He's not an orphan yet,' Sara thought first, though she followed it immediately afterwards by thinking of the look that had been dominating Agent Mahone's eyes as he had reentered the house. 'Even if he might be soon.' "That's not what I was thinking." She shook the blanket out and spread it across Cameron's sleeping form. He stirred and muttered something that Sara could not understand before he was still again. "But when you abandon your children like that, you can't be stunned if the association crops up."

Aldo's lips pressed themselves into a hard, thin line, but he still did not appear to be angry. Sara had never seen him truly angry yet rather than merely irritated, and she wondered how he could fight such a sprawling conspiracy when he never seemed capable of really getting angry. Maybe it was only buried deep and waiting for the right combination of triggers to bring it out again. All that Aldo said to Sara was, "We should get back to making plans."

Probably he was right. A conspiracy as large as the one that Aldo was describing to them would be killing people like her father, the nameless bystander at the phone booth, and Agent Mahone's ex-wife on a daily basis. One little boy without anything else physically wrong with him and sleeping deeply likely needed far less of her attention at the moment.

She was also, however, a doctor, and she was in charge of a traumatized child. That she was not sure that she wanted to speak to or even see Michael until she had found a context for the unhappy thoughts that were swirling around her brain was merely a bonus. There was no good time to have the "In spite of our strange non-relationship based upon overwhelming danger and lies, I'm feeling hurt that you're looking at someone else. You want to explain what that's all about?" talk, anyway.

"I'll stay with Cameron," Sara said. "I don't think that I'd be any good at plotting government overthrow." What she had brought to the table had been around her neck. Now that it was in the hands of quasi-professionals, she could go back to what she knew.

An inner voice told Sara that she had not avoided a man when she wanted to discuss something with him since she was seventeen years old. Sara responded to that inner voice by telling it that she had also never been in mortal danger at least a half-dozen times in the span of a week before, so it could kindly shut up until it had found something actually useful to say. She paused and rubbed at her eyes for a moment, surprised at her own ferocity. It had been bubbling up more and more often.

Sara had thought that she had done a fair job of keeping her voice neutral and friendly, but the others still wasted no time in leaving her alone in the room with her sleeping patient. All save for Lincoln. He lingered on the opposite side of the couch, leaning on it with his forearms crossed over one another and staring at Sara with impassive eyes until she felt like twitching. Outside of a general sense of compassion that she had felt for all of the inmates who had managed to keep their humanity intact, Sara had never troubled her mind in any particular way with the fate of Lincoln Burrows before Michael had come. She disagreed with the death penalty, but she disagreed with it in the abstract, not because any particular case had stirred her. If Michael had not arrived at Fox River and convinced her that what she was doing was indirectly aiding in the execution of an innocent man, then she would have attended Lincoln Burrows death with sorrow as a point of principle, left an angry message on her father's answering machine, and been done with it.

"None of this is your fault, doc," Lincoln told her in a level voice, still making eye contact with her in that eerie and unsettling way. He and Michael had more in common with one another than appeared at first glance.

"I know," Sara said as she realized that Lincoln Burrows was also much smarter than a lot of people wanted to give him credit for. He was no talking about the ornate and chill house, her father's death, or the surrounding conspiracy at all.

"Thought you needed to hear it." Lincoln straightened and followed the others back towards the study.

Sara pulled an ottoman up to the couch and took a seat on the edge of it, putting her chin into her hand and watching Cameron sleep. He slept deeply and without obvious dreams for the most part, save for one or two restless twitches and sighs. Sara reached out and smoothed a few strands of hair back from Cameron's forehead. He was still beneath her hand.

A floorboard creaked; otherwise Sara would not have known that Agent Mahone was there at all. She had no idea how long he had been watching her. Sara pulled her hand back from Cameron's forehead, feeling guilty even though she had done nothing wrong. Now that Agent Mahone was in the room and filling it with his undeniable presence as Cameron's parent, Sara could feel her place as the temporary guardian evaporating away. She stood up from her seat in deference to that as Agent Mahone walked towards the couch and gave his son a swift, critical once-over. He was wearing what looked to be borrowed clothes and had damp hair, with dark circles beneath his eyes. As with Cameron, Agent Mahone had no serious physical injuries that Sara could see. Also as with Cameron, Sara was not sure how much that meant.

"How is he?" Agent Mahone asked in a soft voice as he took up the seat that Sara had vacated for him. Without Michael between them, there was a new tension between Agent Mahone and herself that Sara could not quite place, but suspected that she might if she thought about the way that Michael had disappeared down the hallway for too long. She decided that she would rather not.

Sara hesitated for a moment as she realized how many answers Agent Mahone's question actually had. "Physically, he's fine," she replied. "Nothing worse than a few cuts and bruises. That he's been psychologically traumatized goes without saying."

Agent Mahone glanced at her before he reached out and brushed the strands of hair back from Cameron's forehead in the same way that Sara had done a few moments before. In his hands, the gesture was heartbreaking, and Sara found herself glancing away in order to give the two of them a moment of privacy. When she turned back again Agent Mahone was still watching his son rather than her, only the faintest shadows of the frankly very frightening man who had walked back into the house before remaining. Sara studied his profile and wondered which one of all of the different Alex Mahones that she had seen over the past two days was the real one. It did not seem possible that they could all be true at once. Sara already knew that at least one of them was a killer.

Without looking away from his son, Agent Mahone said, "You might as well ask, Dr. Tancredi. Trying to burn a hole into the side of my head will not be particularly pleasant for either of us." He turned his eyes towards her at last; Sara was not sure which version of Alex Mahone she was looking at just then.

"How did they find you?" Sara asked before she had time to think and censor herself. If she could understand how the Company had found Agent Mahone, then maybe she could also understand how they had found her father, for it did not seem right that they could make arbitrary strikes independent of anyone's culpability. Even as Sara was starting to think of the Company more and more in terms of a cancer, it did not seem _right_. "How did you stomach it?"

His mouth twisting into a smile that had absolutely nothing to do with mirth, Agent Mahone said, "Dr. Tancredi, do you have any idea what it's like to have your entire life defined by the worst thing that you have ever done?" Sara paused and felt as if Agent Mahone had punched her straight in the stomach without ever standing up from his seat. Agent Mahone did not seem to take any triumph from the reaction as he finished calmly, "That's how they got me."

He did not seem inclined to add any more. The silence grew and swelled. In order to break it, finally, Sara said in a soft voice, "I'm sorry about your wife."

Agent Mahone's shoulders tightened until Sara was sure that she was about witness a shift into yet another one of those people that Agent Mahone could be. He relaxed after a few tense seconds and said, without looking at her, "She was my ex-wife. But thank you." Agent Mahone reached out and brushed the hair back from Cameron's forehead again. He frowned. "He's sleeping pretty deeply for all that he's been through."

"I gave him a sedative." Off of Agent Mahone's look, she added, "It was a very small dose, and I was careful. Any hospital would have done the same."

Agent Mahone sighed and nodded once before he turned back towards his son. "He can wait to face everything until tomorrow."

"I would offer you a sedative, too," Sara said, "but I'm not sure how it would interact with what you're already taking." Her voice was more snappish than she had intended, and she knew that she was out of line, but her life as she knew it was over, her father was dead, and the fact that Michael and Agent Mahone were building towards…whatever it was that they were building towards so obviously that everyone could see it except for themselves was making it pretty damned hard to remain stoic and purposeful at the moment. Sara took a breath and realized that her pulse was rising.

"Touché," Agent Mahone said without rancor. He turned back towards his son. Sara did not like the look of his shoulders, the way that they seemed to be run through with barbed wire that must be cutting him, but would also surely cut anyone who tried to offer him comfort in the meanwhile.

Sara took a breath, not sure that she was doing him any favors but also certain that she knew all of the dark ways that restless energy could turn if it was allowed to fester unwatched, and said, "We knew where Terrence Steadman is." Agent Mahone's head jerked upwards. Sara clarified, "The man that Lincoln was convicted of killing."

"I know who he is." Agent Mahone stared off in the direction that Sara had indicated, then towards his son, before he sighed and pushed himself up to his feet. When Sara gave no sign that she was going to follow him, his expression turned puzzled. "Dr. Tancredi, I would think that you would be even more eager to bring the Company to the ground than I am." There was an unhappy hunger, a rawness, to his voice that made Sara wonder if she had really done the right thing.

"I am." The speed with which she spoke and the savagery that colored her voice when she spoke surprised her. Sara took a moment to cough into her hand before she continued. "I'm a doctor. My job is to put things together, not to take them apart. And I-" 'Am scared of how good I might be at this,' Sara thought with a twist to her stomach as she remembered how easy it had been drive Kellerman's car into the side of the motel and how quickly she had become used to the presence of guns. "I am not a soldier."

Agent Mahone remained in the doorway for a beat so that he could continue to watch her, his head tilted to one side in a manner that made Sara wonder what was going on behind those eyes that were like Michael's and yet so different at the same time. "Really," he said before he turned to join the others. It was not until he was gone that Sara realized she had a tension headache building behind her eyes.

End Part Eleven


	12. Chapter 12

Part Twelve

Leaving Cameron behind him on the couch, even knowing that he was sleeping and that Tancredi was there if there should be problems, was nearly enough to make Alex feel as if all of the skin was shuddering off of his body at once. He grit his teeth against one another and forced his feet to take the slow steps down the hall and to the room that had been indicated for him. Alex still thought that he could feel the blood on his skin; he still thought that he could taste Michael Scofield on his mouth. Neither of these thoughts were helping his jangled nerves or helping to lessen the urgency with which he wanted a pill. Alex was not due one for at least another hour, so he pushed the thought away with an internal vehemence that might have startled him a few months before. He had a much better idea of what he was capable of now. After murderer and abandoner looked as if they might possibly be redeemed by a new role as justified traitor, he ought not to jeopardize that delicate balance any more than he had to. He was balancing on the edge of an outright addiction as it was.

"Unfortunately, there's no way to avoid going in partially blind," Scofield's father was saying as Alex found the room and stood in the doorway. It was already crowded with Aldo, Scofield and Burrows themselves and Burrow's teenaged son, the cool specter of Jane, and a man that Alex did not recognize who was seated at a laptop computer. The unknown man was leaning back in his seat with his arms laced behind his head, watching Aldo speak. Scofield and Burrows looked as if they could barely bring themselves to believe what Aldo was telling them, this possibility of it being over, in spite of any complications that might spring up along the way. Jane, Alex noticed a second later, did not appear to be paying Aldo any attention at all. She was watching Alex, and her normally shuttered eyes were written into something that looked as if it could be compassion. Alex wanted neither her pity nor her understanding; he broke eye contact with her so that he could refocus his attention on what the matter at hand.

"I haven't been able to find the firms that designed the house or installed its security," the man in front of the computer said, breaking off long enough to make a frustrated sound. "The Company didn't want to leave behind any chance of discovery that they didn't absolutely have to. So we can't hack into any blueprints or schematics." The man paused and dipped his head in Scofield's direction. "I understand that's your specialty. Anyway, the only way that we'll fully know what we're getting into is if we can find someone on the inside who's been there."

Aldo lifted his eyebrows in Alex's direction. He had acted as if he had not seen Alex when Alex had come to stand in the doorway, but Alex had seen enough old soldiers to know better. They didn't become old in the first place by being unaware of their surroundings; Alex doubted that there was very much at all taking place in this house that slid beneath Aldo Burrows's notice.

Alex was already shaking his head before the man at the computer even had time to finish his sentence. "Until two days ago, I thought that Lincoln Burrows was actually guilty." The man himself looked gratified to hear that. His brother had not ceased staring at Alex since his arrival. Someone really needed to pull Scofield to the side and tell him that that stare of his could be a liability as well as an asset.

"Blind it is, then," Aldo said. He glanced Jane's way. "Worked in Slovakia."

Her lips twitched. "Barely."

Turning back, Aldo continued. "Half of us will travel to Great Falls and retrieve Steadman." It was the careful euphemism that "retrieved" became that pricked Alex's ears more than anything else that Aldo had said. The man had once been a soldier. Alex knew that language. "The other half will go to Chicago and get the tape."

"Lincoln and I are going to Great Falls," Scofield said without hesitation. He was leaning back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, seemingly at ease with the entire situation. Only Alex knew how tense and wary Scofield actually was, because Alex was feeling it himself. Two peas in a pod. Alex touched his lips with his tongue before he could halt himself.

Aldo straightened, brow furrowing, and for a moment looked as if he wanted to be paternal. That might have been welcome thirty years before, but now Alex had a mind that all it would do would be to shatter beyond repair the balance that had been achieved thus far. "Linc and I are too well-known in Chicago," Scofield finished, a smile quirking the edge of his mouth. He looked inescapably smug before the gesture ended, in the way that certain smiles of his had a way of doing. Alex found that he really didn't mind; he was already in such a stew that he was in no mood to dissect any emotions that happened to come to the surface.

This was a bad time for him to need to violently wrest his priorities back into their proper order.

"So will I," Alex said. The twist of his mouth had none of the ironic pleasure of Scofield's own. He suspected that it made him look older.

Aldo paused, ripped away from the scolding that he had been preparing to give Scofield, while Jane straightened. Alex wanted to look her in the eye even less than he had before.

"We were thinking that you would be on the Chicago trip," Aldo said delicately. It was the very way that he said it, so solicitous, that made the hair on the back of Alex's neck stand on end. The sons that Aldo had walked away from had made it through the gauntlet without him and were now standing in the same room with him ready to clean up his messes. The son that Alex had nearly sacrificed his soul for, would do so again, and had _still_ come within a hair's breadth of losing was sleeping, motherless, with the aid of sedatives a few rooms over and may well never be the same again. _He had no right_. These flashes of rage that came and then went, leaving him numbed and exhausted afterwards, were now something to be harnessed and held back rather than rooted out altogether.

"'We' do, do we?" Alex said with a brittle and angry smile, his voice ready to slice up the unwary like broken glass. To his surprise, it was Burrows rather than Scofield or even Jane who straightened up from his slouch and gave Alex a hard look. "I don't recall placing myself under your command."

"Bringing the Company to ground is more important than your revenge," Aldo told him, the Zen that he had wrapped himself in to that point cracking to reveal something that blazed.

Really? Aldo really thought that a good glare was going to make Alex back down and play nicely? If so, then he had foolishly not taken into account that Alex had been looking into the mouth of hell itself only a few hours before. "Don't you dare lecture me about revenge," Alex started in a low voice. He knew well enough the crimes that he had committed in the name of protecting his family, even for a short time. He would be damned before he would be talked down to by a man who had apparently gone one for decades before he had learned the lesson.

"I want to go to Chicago," Tancredi said from a point behind Alex's shoulder. She had come up so silently, and everyone had been so focused on Aldo and Alex, that Alex was not the only one who jumped slightly to hear her voice. Alex turned to look at her, his brow furrowing. "I can hear Cameron from here if he needs me," Tancredi said. To Aldo and the rest of the group she went on, "I need to deal with Chicago. And I, uh, would feel more comfortable if Jane were to come with me." Tancredi looked at Alex for a long moment, her eyes shuttered and grave, before she said, "No offense, but Michael and Lincoln need to put Great Falls to rest, and I would rather travel with someone who hasn't tried to kill me."

Alex's lips quirked before he could stop himself even he realized that the gesture was not likely to be reassuring. He had been under no orders to kill Sara Tancredi, but that could have changed at any moment. He doubted that being told that, if he had killed her, he would have done it to spare her whatever Kellerman had in mind would have put her mind at ease. The chances that Scofield had told her everything that he knew about the Company were far greater than the chances that he would have told David Apolskis anything of import.

Tancredi was a clever woman. Alex could see why she would be attracted to Scofield, and he to her. If Alex's cup was not already running over so hard with everything else that he had done over the past year, he might even take her cues. He and Scofield also tended to share a sense of tunnel vision, Alex had noticed. He wondered if Tancredi could be accused of the same, or if she was more of a big picture kind of woman.

"Sara, you don't have to be a part of this," Scofield told Tancredi. It was more animation than he had shown since Alex had entered the room, and the first time that he had looked at Alex at all. There was a void in the absence; Alex was beginning to despair that his priorities would ever be in their proper order again.

"I'm already a part of this, Michael," Tancredi said with a small and disbelieving laugh. She paused and cocked her head to the side, making Alex straighten, but continued when she did not hear anything that troubled her further. "If I'm already in over my head, then twelve feet of water and nine feet aren't really all that different. And I need…" Tancredi paused, straightened, and became a different woman from one moment to the next. Alex had already seen this woman a few times before, usually when she was holding a gun on him, and was so not surprised to see her reemerge now. Aldo and Lincoln were the only ones who lifted their eyebrows.

"I wasn't able to see my father buried," Tancredi finished in a calm voice that did not tremble. "I need to lay him to rest."

Aldo did not strike Alex as a man who was used to anything that did not fall out according to his orchestrations very often. In the deep gray haze that had enveloped him every since he had discovered Pam's body and pulled Cameron out from beneath the bed, broken only by those black and pulsing bursts of rage, it was a bit startling to discover that he could still be amused by anything at all. Aldo let out a long sigh that added one more nuance to Alex's belief that the man was really an old soldier, for this kind of chaos was unthinkable in a military setting. It was even making Alex's own head begin to ache.

"I can't pass the buck on this one," Tancredi finished.

"That's not what I meant, Doctor," Alex told her.

"No," Tancredi said in a level voice that would not let Alex determine whether she was saying no, she knew that was not what he meant or no, he was a liar. "But I need to do it."

Aldo sighed again and pinched at the bridge of his nose. He peeked at Jane beneath his hand as he did it, and Jane lifted her shoulders into a shrug that was almost too small to be noticed. "We'll leave tomorrow morning," he said. "If that's alright with everyone." The tone was nearly enough to make Alex smile.

A soft knock upon the doorframe announced Monica's presence. The doorway was becoming rather crowded at this point with people who knew how to move without making any sound at all. It was playing hell with Alex's nerves.

"Yes?" Aldo said.

"Miss Graves is on hold," Monica told Aldo after she had greeted everyone with a nod. "She wants that progress report."

"I said that I would talk to her when I actually had something to report," Aldo said. His tone was snappish enough to make Monica lean back and blink for a moment before she recovered.

"She was rather adamant." Monica made a slight face at Aldo. Alex had a feeling that the definition of adamant where this mysterious Miss Graves was concerned often took on an idiosyncratic and understated meaning.

"Tell her that I'll be there in a moment," Aldo said after sharing another one of his secret looks with Jane.

"Of course." Monica turned and ghosted away with no more noise to announce her departure than had announced her arrival. She touched at Alex's arm once in passing, even that brief moment of sympathy enough to make him jump.

Aldo pushed past them all so that he could follow Monica. Ben closed his laptop and stood himself, saying, "Looks like my job is done for the night." He moved, Alex noticed, every bit as quietly as Monica had. They had to learn it during orientation or something. With them gone, it was like being in the shack in New Mexico all over again, minus the presence of guns. Tancredi bore it for only a few seconds before she said, "I shouldn't leave Cameron alone for too long." She only made it a few steps before she stopped, her shoulders taut, and turned back. "And as a doctor, Agent Mahone, I'm advising you to get some sleep, too. If you want a sedative, I'll find something that won't interact with your current medication. But you look like refried hell."

"Is that a technical medical term?" Alex could not stop himself from asking.

"Learned it in first year," Tancredi responded. "I'm serious. You need the rest."

"As do we all." Alex scrubbed his hand over his face and glanced at the clock above the desk, which stated that it was no technically the morning that all of them had been waiting for. "I'd rather sit with Cameron."

"I can do that." Tancredi did not appear to be terribly ruffled by Alex's glare. Next time, he would argue with a doctor who had not spent an extensive amount of time working in a prison and dealing with men who killed people for a living. "Rest," Tancredi finished before she turned and walked away. While Scofield was only pulling his eyes away from Alex so that he might affix Tancredi with that drowning-pool stare of his, she did not look towards Scofield even once.

Jane ghosted out next, with a silence that rivaled Aldo's and Ben's and made Alex wonder if he was imagining things when he thought that any of these people actually had feet. Burrows followed next, his son in tow, though he did pause in order to fix Scofield with a warning look before he went. Alex did not need to be privy to the secret language of families in order to know what that look meant. Interesting, then, was the fact that Burrows made sure to shut the door after himself as he exited.

Alex rubbed at his eyes again as he and Scofield were left alone together, a gesture of exhaustion that he could not control even as sleep was the farthest thing from his mind. Scofield was still watching him, those eerie eyes as calm and nearly inhuman as Alex had always seem them. He had only been witness to Scofield losing control, coming down to earth, and joining the ranks of the human race a few times, usually when a threat to Burrows was somehow imminent. Alex had a urge to the do the most shocking thing that he could think of in order to break that cool composure and the make the chill ideal and puzzle that Alex had been chasing become human like the rest of them. It was not fair that he should remain so calm while Alex was only waiting for the next big event to come around the bend in the road and finally break him.

Scofield regarded the closed door with amusement for a few seconds before he said, "My brother is not subtle."

"I'd gathered that about him, yes," Alex said in a dry tone. Everything that he had read about Lincoln Burrows's previous crimes when he had first come on to the Fox River case had suggested a rhinoceros that had turned to crime out of a lack of direction and anything better to do. The lack of violence in his list of priors compared to the crime that he was sentenced to death for had sent a prickle up Alex's spine that he had not understood until earlier that day, but other than that there was very little about Lincoln Burrows that would cause people to refer to him as mysterious.

"He's not stupid, though," Scofield continued. "That's what a lot of people don't understand about him." He paused. "Which make me think that you and I aren't being subtle, either."

Alex had far too much to deal with right now, with finding a way to keep his son from being traumatized further and then getting him somewhere to heal from what had already happened, with trying to mitigate and atone for his own crimes. Not to mention that he was still trying to find a way to work within this new circle of people who were doing the same work that he had been doing before he had allowed himself to be jerked astray, even though the fact that every single one of them was a criminal and were seeking to bring down an entire administration was causing an ache of cognitive dissonance behind his eyes. Maybe he would even find some time in there to deal with his own grief over Pam's death and the role that he had indirectly played in it. What he did not have time for was a half-panicked game of 'Guess My Sexual Orientation' with Michael Scofield, and so Alex was opening his mouth to tell Scofield that it was fine, that he could right it off as strain and surplus adrenaline on both sides, and that it need not happen again.

Scofield's reflexes were faster than Alex ever would have guessed, as he hardly saw Scofield move before his mouth was upon Alex's. Alex raised his hand, still seeing danger everywhere, even- I especially /I -here, but Scofield caught his wrist. He held on loosely and made it clear that he was only interested in pausing Alex until Alex was sure that stopping was what eh really wanted. His tongue entered Alex's mouth and pulled a soft, reluctant sigh from the back of Alex's throat. Scofield struck Alex as the kind of man who had come into himself late in life, as it would take time before the opposite sex realized that Scofield's calm control was only that and not proof that he really was a dick, but Scofield was good at this. He ran his thumb along Alex's jaw, using his hand to hold Alex in place long after Alex had made it clear that he had no interest in pulling away. The loss of control would have rankled him once; now that he had so much on his shoulders that he felt as if he might be pressed down into the earth and never seen again, it was even a relief. He put his hands against the small of Scofield's back and jerked him closer, while Scofield's hand against Alex's jaw tightened. His mouth on Alex's was nearly angry, drawing Alex's lower lip into his mouth and then biting down on it hard enough to make Alex first flinch and then growl before he drove himself forward and even more fiercely against Scofield. Scofield didn't like uncertainty or chaos; Alex could have laughed. He cupped the back of Scofield's head as they were finally forced to part so that the two of them could breathe. Scofield did not fight the hand and seemed content to, for a few moments at least, remain still with his forehead pressed against Alex's own. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them, Alex was sure, even knew what to say.

End Part Twelve


	13. Chapter 13

Part Thirteen

The house was almost making Lincoln uneasy. It was too big, too ornate, too much of a reminder that he didn't fit into it quite right. Michael didn't fit, either, but Lincoln had known ever since the two of them were kids that Michael was smart enough to mold himself and pass for whatever he wanted to be. If that made him happy, then Lincoln wished him all of the success in the world. In the meantime, he felt as though he was about to jump right out of his own skin.

Staying in one place for more than a few moments at a time was impossible, so Lincoln paced the halls even as he knew that he should be getting whatever rest that he could and that he was recreating the pacing that he had often done in his tiny cell or during the single hour of yard time afforded to him at Fox River. He could not shake the feeling that that one grim cage was being exchanged for one with nicer drapes, and that the bars would come slamming down to reveal themselves the moment that he tried to slip out the door. The Panama plan that he and Michael had by mutual agreement decided to abandon had never seemed sweeter.

It was a selfish thought, probably, but Lincoln did not mind. He wasn't a hero, and he didn't want to save the world. That wasn't a thought that kept him up at night. Neither was Michael, though Lincoln suspected that Michael did not sleep nearly as easily over it. Lincoln wanted to protect his kid and he wanted his life back, in that order. He took the brief flashes of better instinct that rose up in him now and again for what they were.

It was fitting, Lincoln thought with a certain dark humor, that as he was thinking of heroes he should meet their beautiful blonde antithesis wandering the same hallways. Jane was every bit as much of an insomniac as Lincoln himself.

She had taken off the jacket, leaving her only in her slacks and a silk blouse the color of a dove's breast. She had loosened a few of the buttons, as well, so that she was exposing the smooth line of her clavicle, the first creamy hint of her cleavage. Jane's hair was pulled back from her face, and in cleaning herself up earlier she had missed a dot of blood beneath her left ear.

Jane smiled when she saw him. "You've been down this hallway three times," she told him in a lilting voice that sounded nearly nothing like the Jane that he had grown accustomed to. "The house isn't that big."

"It's big enough," Lincoln said. He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "Even before I was framed for murder, this would be pretty damned big."

Jane tilted her head to one side, stared at him intently for a moment, and then gave a single, decisive nod. "Don't pretend it's about the house," she said. She walked past him and into a part of the house that Lincoln had not yet been. He assumed that people who stayed here quasi-regularly slept there.

Lincoln had not been intending to do anything other than let Jane continue her nocturnal wanderings down any hall that she chose unfollowed, until she said that. "What are you talking about?" he asked as he rounded after her.

Jane halted, looked Lincoln in the eye. Lincoln wanted, more than anything, to finally see Jane with that composure of hers rattled, with the blood high in her cheeks and her eyes dilated and dark. Anger. Passion. Either would work.

"I've known Aldo for a very long time," Jane told him. "You and your brother are not as different from him as you'd like to think. I know what he looks like when he's worried about one of his kids. You have the same look."

Lincoln had spent most of his adult life working so that he would only truly be known to a handful of people. Abruptly discovering that the ranks included at least one other was the last thing that he needed on the eve of a plan whose greatest chance of working was if God actually existed. He leaned back onto his heels and said in a gruff voice, "Doesn't take a genius to see that I'd be worried about my kid right now." LJ was asleep, or at least had said that that was where he was going. With the way that this house resembled a maze, Lincoln might well find him walking down some other hallway next.

"Aldo worried that he had only sealed your fates by leaving, too," Jane continued. She was a beautiful woman, but Lincoln swore that her insistence upon staying with the subject of Aldo Burrows was doing more to cool his ardor than a bucket of ice water. "That you and Michael would still turn out like him."

"Lucky for him, I'm an underachiever," Lincoln snapped, even though the idea that LJ might use his short foray as a drug dealer as a way to become just like his old man had kept him up on more than a few nights. "Look, Jane, I'm willing to work with my old man if that's what it will take to clear my name and end this. That doesn't mean that I want to go all Dr. Phil about him."

Jane actually looked disappointed for a few seconds. It occurred to Lincoln that he had seen more of the normal span of human emotion from her in the past ten minutes than he had in the previous day and a half. Jane when she was working and Jane when she was at rest were becoming different enough to seem like a pair of entirely different women.

"You should try to get some sleep," Jane told Lincoln when she had finished making the transformation back into the sleek, professional cog in her machine. It was a change that was not flattering on her, now that Lincoln had seen the difference. "Bad things tend to happen when people's focus slips."

Lincoln snorted and scrubbed his hand across the back of his neck. "Jane, I would sleep if I could," he told her. His eyes were burning with fatigue even as his body refused to do anything other than keep moving. That was what happened when you expected danger to leap out from around every corner. Lincoln knew the response well. "If it were only a matter of concentrating, then there wouldn't be half as many people hooked on that sleeping pill shit. And you're not exactly resting easy yourself, out here talking to me."

"I've had periodic insomnia for years," Jane said simply. "It comes with the territory." Lincoln was not certain if she meant the things that she had done while she was collecting her paychecks from the Company, or when she was already a part of this amorphous agency that was meant to fight it. No more than a second went by before he decided that he preferred not to know. "I've found that company can help, however, if that company is appropriately stimulating."

Jane fixed Lincoln with a long, slow once-over that ran from the crown of his head down to the shoes on his feet, the clear and cool gray of her eyes doing nothing to hide that the look in them was hungry. Her tongue came out for the briefest of seconds to touch at the split that Lincoln had put into her lower lip. Her mouth still looked pink and full because of it. Lincoln did not think that he had ever received a more clear invitation from a woman in his life. His pulse began to rise immediately.

"I'd hate to leave you lonely," Lincoln said, knowing that it sounded cheesy and grinning all the same. Blame Fox River; his skills were rusty.

Jane inclined her head slightly down the hallway where she had been going when Lincoln had come across her. "The room where I stay when I'm here is this way," she said, and turned to go without waiting to see if Lincoln would follow her.

He did, of course, his pulse already rising, his eyes fixed upon the curves of Jane's ass as she strode in front of him. She glanced back once as she drew them to a halt in front of an anonymous door, her smile knowing and suggestive. Lincoln wanted to push her back against that door then and there.

As it was, he barely waited for Jane to open it, much less long enough to glance around in order to get a lay of the land and ensure that it was not filled with men carrying guns and mean expressions before he stepped forward, cupped Jane's face in his hands, and brought his mouth down hard onto hers.

Jane made a muffled sound of surprise and was swift to open her mouth to him, scrabbling her hands across his chest until she was able to get a grip on his shirt. She dragged him closer. Lincoln was happy to be pulled. He pulled Jane's hair loose from its clip so that it could spill free around her shoulders, needing to feel its cornsilk texture through his fingers. Lincoln shushed Jane's noise of protest by kissing her hard, again, scarcely leaving enough time for each of them to draw a breath before he was doing it once more. He cupped Jane's ass with both hands so that he could lift her up and against him. He had been getting hard ever since he had touched his mouth to hers. Lincoln knew that Jane could feel it in the way that her hands clenched even more tightly through the front of his shirt.

"Wait," Jane panted against Lincoln's mouth before she pushed him back a step. "Wait." She began to hurriedly work at the buttons of her blouse, her composure broken for the first time since Lincoln had known her. Her fingers were shaking, and she was missing more buttons than she was managing to unfasten. It was all that Lincoln could do not to solve the problem by simply ripping the clothing off of her, and clichés be damned. Instead, he focused on the buttons of his own shirt, drawing it off and throwing it to the side before Jane had even managed to unbutton her blouse down to her navel. There was lace on her bra.

"Oh," Jane said as she paused for a moment and took in Lincoln's half-clothed form, her fingers stilling on the buttons. Prison food, prison risks, and then being forced on the run immediately afterwards didn't leave a whole lot of room for a person to grow fat and lazy. Lincoln grinned at her again.

"Come here," he growled before he put his hands around Jane's waist. He was able to lift her up as if she weighed nothing at all. Jane obliged by wrapping hers legs around his waist immediately, grinding her hips down just so, all the while her mouth found the side of his neck. Jane's tongue flicked over Lincoln's pulse point and made the hands that were holding her up twitch, before she bit down and made Lincoln gasp.

"Jesus!" he exploded. He swore that he heard Jane giggle, but it was a sound so patently unlike her that he could not be sure.

With Jane still wrapping her long legs around him, a burden that he did not mind at all, Lincoln walked the both of them over to the bed. Jane maintained her grip on him even as he dropped her down to the mattress hard enough to make the springs creak, so that he was pulled down on top of her as she fell. She made short work of his surprised 'oof' by finding his cock through the front of his pants and dragging a lower sound from his mouth to replace it. He had achieved his goal of seeing Jane with her eyes dilated and her lips full and parted.

"You have on too many clothes," Jane said to him. Her golden hair was fanned out around her head; the irony made Lincoln grin. She sat up and, leaving Lincoln to take care of that problem for himself, had within seconds dealt with the remaining buttons on her blouse and shrugged it off before she went to work on her bra. Her breasts were well-shaped, skin the color of ivory and cream, and of the perfect size for Lincoln to cup into the palms of his hands. She gasped when she felt the callus on Lincoln's thumb move across her nipple.

"Come here," Lincoln said again in a low voice that was beyond his control and barely sounded like himself, wrapping his arm around the small of Jane's back so that he could hold her against him and kiss her again. Her neck tasted like salt and, Lincoln imagined, adrenaline. The taste continued as he worked his way down and to her breasts. He broke away from her only long enough to tug his pants off before he returned.

"Please tell me that you have a condom," Lincoln said in that low and rasping voice. Sex had been a fairly low priority once they had all escaped from Fox River, even as so much time spent in the company of men exclusively seemed to have hardwired Lincoln to notice every female form that came within ten yards of him.

"I'm on protection," Jane told him. "So as long as you're healthy…?"

"As a horse," was all that Lincoln said before he shifted them both more fully onto the bed, knelt between Jane's thighs, and entered her. She made a mewling sound as she shifted her hips to meet him; Lincoln's senses were filled, after three years of exclusively male company, with the scent and feel of woman. Her eyes when she did look at him were dazed, the pupils huge and dark. For the most part she kept them closed and her head thrown back. Face flushed, composure broken, everything that Lincoln had vowed that he was going to get. Jane made no sound when she came, only dipped her head so that the sweaty strands of her hair hid her face and then grit her teeth to swallow back whatever cry she might have made. Lincoln thrust up and into her, approaching his own orgasm, while she continued to draw those impenetrable designs up and down his back. She bit the side of his neck mere seconds before Lincoln orgasmed himself, and he hissed as he sank down on top of her.

"Goddamn," Lincoln said, and touched at the side of his neck. He stared down at Jane in disbelief. "The Company hires vampires, or what?"

Jane grinned at him, flushed and sated. She still looked brighter and more human than she had at any point previous to that. Jane began to trace idle patterns up and down Lincoln's bicep. "The Company hires whoever will be useful to them." A darkness entered Jane's voice for the first time since she had invited Lincoln into her room, and she ceased her invisible doodling. She shivered abruptly and then said, "I'm cold." The two of them had not made it beneath the bedcovers.

Lincoln was already starting to feel drowsy, but he swung his legs over the side of the bed in preparation to leave all the same. "Hell of an insomnia cure, Jane," he told her as he watched her nude form wriggle beneath the blanket and make herself comfortable.

She looked up, watched him for a moment, and then flicked the covers back so that Lincoln could join her beneath the blankets if he wished. The sleek, lean lines of her body were revealed to him again as he did so. It was enough to make Lincoln wonder how long his period of satiety was going to last. "No use in finding another room," she told him. "You can share mine if you'd like."

Lincoln had had sex with a great many women; the ones that he had actually stayed around in order to sleep with afterwards made up a much smaller pool. Jane did not look as if she extended the invitation on a regular basis, either. Her body language was stiff as Lincoln eased himself down into the bed beside her and drew the blankets back across them both. Jane's skin was still flushed and warm, her hair darkened with sweat around her temples. It was still several shades lighter than Veronica's had been. Lincoln still could not stop himself from reaching out and dragging the loose strands through his fingers. Jane stiffened in alarm at the sudden movement, then began to relax into the touch.

"Nice place," Lincoln said as he took a look about Jane's room. It looked like something that he would expect from a nicely appointed hotel, much like the rest of the house. If Jane kept any signs of herself within the room, then she was hiding them well. The only proof that a person stayed her was a small crucifix on a golden chain, tossed down onto the table beside the bed.

Jane noticed him looking and said slowly, "I don't strike you as the sort of woman who would be religious."

"Not really." Thinking that he must have offended her, Lincoln put his arm around her shoulder and rubbed at her bicep. His hand felt natural there; he could feel Jane relaxing against his chest.

"After the things that I've done, it's comforting to believe in grace." While Lincoln was pondering that, she went on. "I have a house. In Portland. It looks more like me." Jane was relaxing more with every moment that she had time to get used to the presence of Lincoln in her bed. "I'd like to show you what the bed there looks like when this is over. If you'd like."

Lincoln gave the strands of hair that he was playing with a gentle tug. "I'd like."

"Good." Jane had not assumed her warrior's armor again quite yet. She laid her head down on his chest, continuing to watch him for a few moments before she closed her eyes. Lincoln kept playing with her hair until he succumbed to sleep himself.

End Part Thirteen


	14. Chapter 14

Part Fourteen

Sara didn't sleep more than a few minutes at a time that night, and even those had to creep up on her without her consent. Eventually she moved from the ottoman to a an armchair on the other side of the room that still allowed her to keep Cameron in her line of sight when her eyes began to burn. The chair had an armrest on which Sara could brace her elbow and prop up her head, while still being uncomfortable enough to discourage sleep. Cameron himself showed little in the way of nightmares, even after the Ativan should have worn off. That was a good sign. He was going to have enough to deal with after he woke up.

Alex came into the room frequently to watch Cameron without speaking; he and Sara pretended not to notice each other. He would leave again shortly afterwards each time, as if something was keeping him from staying in one place for too long.

Sara rose for good shortly after the sun had begun to arc over the horizon. Rubbing at her eyes and suspecting that her last bout of sleepiness had lasted more than the handful of minutes that she was allotting to herself, she wandered into the kitchen where she and Michael had been flirting the night before. Sara thought that she must be the only one awake at this hour. She was wrong.

Monica was already awake and dressed, standing at the counter and fussing with the coffee maker. She was wearing a business suit and shoes with a short heel, her hair pulled back into an impeccable French twist. Monica looked like someone's realtor; thinking of the way that Jane and Aldo dressed, Sara wondered what the full extent of Monica's role within this operation actually was.

"Good morning," Monica said when she noticed that Sara was standing there. She gestured towards the refrigerator behind her. "There's food in there if you want it. I do a lot of things, but cooking is not one of them. I might have coffee in a minute, though." Monica pulled a mysterious panel from the coffee maker and peered down at it before she replaced it where it had been and muttered, "Stupid thing."

Sara tended not have much of an appetite in the morning, even when she was wasn't nervous, and on the same day that she was going back into the lion's den where she had nearly been killed there was none at all. She picked up an orange from a bowl on the counter and began to peel it as she watched Monica for a few moments more. At long last, Sara reached around Monica and pushed the same series of buttons that she had figured out the night before. The smell of fresh coffee began to fill the kitchen.

"Thanks," Monica said, sounding surprised. She reached out and slapped at the side of the coffee maker, as if asking why it had needed to make that so difficult.

"Trial and error." Sara leaned back against the counter and returned to her orange as she waited for the caffeine. She could not stop herself from watching Monica, marveling at how calm and composed the woman was when Sara was sure that she would be jitterbugging right out of her skin if she had to process the Company and the seemingly insurmountable power that it actually had on a daily basis. Fighting against it was like swimming against a strong current. Surely, before the tape had dropped into their laps, it must have been a good day just to tread water.

Sara also, thought she was inwardly horrified by the thought, wondered how many people Monica had killed. The man who had tried to murder Sara a few days before had looked as if he could have sat down and helped her with her taxes.

"I've never been in the field," Monica said abruptly.

"Excuse me?" Sara took a bite of her orange and discovered that all of her normal rules about appetite went right out the window when she had eaten next to nothing the day before. She peeled off another section and popped it into her mouth before she even had time to finish chewing the first.

"I've never been in the field," Monica repeated. She poured herself a cup of coffee, added sugar, and then reached around Sara and into the refrigerator for cream. "And I haven't been in so much as a fist fight since the ninth grade. If you're looking for a badass, then I suggest that you look somewhere else."

"That's not what I was thinking," Sara lied. She could not stop herself from looking down at the kitchen tile as she spoke. If she was this bad of a liar when dealing with a perfect stranger, then it was a small wonder that her father had always been able to tell when she was using.

"I'm not offended," Monica said, and looked as if she meant it. "Everyone thinks that when they first learn that this operation exists. They usually meet agents like Aldo or Jane first, so that they think that every safe house is going to be staffed with ninjas." Monica shrugged before taking a sip of her coffee and finding that it was to her liking. She reached into the basket on the kitchen island, took out a muffin for herself, and began to eat it in small and ladylike bites. "Ben is very good with computers. I'm very good with keeping people organized and focused." Monica shrugged and gave her a small and almost conspiratorial smile. "The secret to herding cats is not to let them realize that they're being herded."

That was rather a more chilling statement than Sara liked to hear from a woman that she had been beginning to like. She looked up from her orange in time to see Lincoln and Jane moving from the same hallway, down which Lincoln had disappeared the night before. Though the both of them were impeccably groomed, Sara still felt her eyebrows crawling up towards her hairline. So, she noticed, were Monica's.

Jane and Lincoln parted ways from one another at the entrance to the kitchen. Jane left, presumably in search of Aldo, while Lincoln went to find LJ. Lincoln gave Sara a courteous and nearly old-fashioned nod before he did so. "Mornin', doc. Monica."

"Good morning," Sara answered as Monica waggled her fingers. Sara could not help but look back upon what Monica had said to her a few moments before and wonder how many people had stayed in this safe house after first learning what the Company was and how far it extended, and how many of them were actually able to go back to their normal lives again afterwards. Monica reminded Sara of a girl that she had gone to college with, Ben of her neighbor across the hall back in Chicago.

Lincoln had barely turned away from the entryway before he was nearly running over Ben, who had crept up behind him without making a sound. So maybe he wasn't exactly like the neighbor, who tended to announce his presence loudly wherever he went. Maybe lessons in getting from one place to another like a ninja were a part of the anti-Company orientation that one got after signing on the dotted line.

Ben stepped to the side so that Lincoln could pass. "Clearly, he's a morning person," he said after Lincoln had disappeared without saying a word.

"He's not bad," Sara responded automatically, though she realized a bare second later that she didn't know Lincoln nearly well enough to say that for herself. He was good enough that Michael had been willing to move heaven and earth in order to break him out of prison, and Michael had yet to be wrong in his assessment of a person.

"Aldo's a bear in the morning, too," Ben said. He rolled his shoulders and rubbed his neck before he added, "Speaking of that, tell me that there's coffee. It's way too early for a war zone, and there are way too many people in this house who could actually make that happen." Monica reached out and tapped at the coffee carafe with one manicured nail. Ben made an appreciative sound and began searching the cabinets for a mug, while Sara glanced out of the kitchen and into the house proper again.

Agent Mahone emerged from one of the seemingly endless successions of hallways while Michael arrived from another. While neither of them looked as if he had actually slept, it was a different and far less sated kind of sleeplessness than the sort that had marked Lincoln and Jane while they were ambling through. Sara felt relieved even as Michael blew straight through without seeming to realize that she was there at all. Her conflicted feelings did not ease when Agent Mahone's first act was to stride over to the couch where his son was still sleeping.

'Stop acting like you're still in high school,' Sara thought as she went over to stand beside him.

"The sedative wore off a few hours ago," Sara said. Agent Mahone was staring down at Cameron, his features taut but unreadable. Sara thought that the fact that the rest of his body language was tense to the point of being rigged to explode told the rest of the story quite well.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Agent Mahone asked, raising his head so that he could look Sara in the eye. "That he's still sleeping."

'I'm not a psychiatrist,' was Sara's first thought. It took her a moment more to realize that Agent Mahone was not asking her as a federal agent seeking her professional opinion, but as a grieving parent looking to be reassured. She tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ears and resolved to do her best.

"Sleeping excessively can be a symptom of both depression and post traumatic stress disorder," Sara answered honestly. Agent Mahone closed his eyes and stayed that way for several seconds before he opened them again. "But it hasn't even been a full twelve hours since the…trauma, so it very well might be that he's just tired. I think…I think that your wife might have shielded him from a lot of it." Sara of course had no idea if that was true at all, but it was about as close to a lie as she was willing to get. Agent Mahone's swift and sardonic glance said that he knew it, too, damn him. "He doesn't seem to be having too many nightmares, though, and that's a good thing even if it's too early to tell anything else. You're still probably going to want to find someone for him to talk to on a regular basis once this is all over." Probably someone for herself, too, Sara added silently.

"Yeah." Agent Mahone rubbed his hand across his face. Sara noticed that he was wearing a good two days' worth of stubble. "Thank you. For looking out for him last night." Agent Mahone's tone expressed his disgust that he had not been able to do it himself, as if anyone who looked at him could not tell that he had been on the verge of dropping. Thinking that he was failing if he was not effortlessly holding up the entire world. Sara knew another man like that.

"You're welcome," Sara said simply, without adding that she herself had benefited from being able to go back to her old job for a few hours. She touched Agent Mahone lightly on the arm before she went back into the kitchen so that he could have a few minutes alone with his son.

Michael had returned to the kitchen, shaved and dressed even though he still looked very tired. His lips curved when he caught sight of her. "Good morning."

"Good morning." Sara watched the curve of Michael's mouth and the way that a dimple was put into his cheek when he smiled. She needed to kiss that mouth, desperately, and didn't care that it would make the bizarre and dysfunctional atmosphere of the kitchen even more awkward as a result.

Sara put her hand on the back of Michael's neck, possessive even though a part of her was insisting that the point was to let Michael go even though the rest of her hadn't caught up with that memo yet, and angled his mouth down to meet hers. Michael let out a surprised, pleased exhalation before he returned the attention, his hand settling against the small of her back for a moment before he remembered their audience and dropped it. Sara's skin tingled where it had been.

"That was nice," Michael whispered to her when they had stepped away from her. He sounded confused, and Sara was glad to welcome one more member to her club.

She swallowed and said, rather than the whole list of things that she was thinking, "You don't owe me anything, Michael." Because if he thought that he did, she knew, there would be no stopping him from paying that debt. The very idea horrified Sara, even though she was not sure that she liked the possibility of letting him go any more.

Michael's eyes darkened. "I'm not sure what you mean."

Jesus, he was a terrible liar. Sara had no idea how he had gotten his plan this far, when he was so bad at it. Unless she was the only one that he could not lie to. That thought did not make Sara feel any better.

She wanted to kiss him again, but only said instead, "I made my own choices. _None_ of them were your fault. Make yours." If what either one of them felt was love, or even only the beginnings of it, then all right. But she would not carry on anything that was based upon obligation. Sara caught herself a second later and added, in a lower tone that hardly sounded like herself, "And so you know? That doesn't mean that I'm waving the white flag, either."

A startled laugh came from Michael's mouth before he leaned back and studied Sara's face for several seconds. Sara never knew what he was looking at when he stared at her like that. Sometimes she thought that he might be seeing the same beauty there that he saw in his buildings. "I know." Their hands found each other even though Sara was not sure that either one of them had given the order to move.

Lincoln and Agent Mahone appeared at one end of the kitchen, Aldo and Jane at the other. The second group of people looked considerably happier than the first. While Jane and Aldo were both focused and intense, as if going into the field required several hours of mental preparation and they wanted to be sure that they didn't waste a moment when they could be getting ready to kill people, there were storm clouds painted dark and fierce across Lincoln's eyes. Sara scanned him and Agent Mahone both from their heads down to their feet and did not realize until she was done that she had been looking for blood. When she discovered that neither of them had a bruise to show, she was not sure that she actually felt better.

LJ seemed to materialize from nowhere behind his father. As Lincoln was in a temper that was only barely being held in by the boundaries of his skin, he seemed even larger than he did when he was calm. It was easy to see how LJ could have lingered in the shadow of that without being seen. He didn't waste any time in going to stand by Jane. She raised startled eyes to Lincoln as the boy approached.

"LJ's going to be going with you and Sara to Chicago," Lincoln gritted. The words were barely intelligible; he was hardly able to move his jaw. Lincoln cast Agent Mahone a glare in addition to these words, as if Agent Mahone rather than his own teenaged son was the one who was misbehaving. Agent Mahone's quirked eyebrow spoke of a great many worse things that he had seen, and suggested that Lincoln try harder the next time if he truly wanted to make an impression.

Jane's jaw dropped, and she turned towards Aldo in preparation for him to put a halt to any such idiocy. Aldo only looked towards the ceiling for a few seconds, perhaps thinking of how much older LJ was than Lincoln and Michael had been when he abandoned them, and said, "It's not as if we're not breaking every other protocol that we have. There are more civilians on this mission than there are actual field agents."

Jane continued to stare at Aldo as if she was sure that he was playing an ill-timed joke on them all and that he was surely going to put a halt to at any second. When that moment did not come, Jane snapped her mouth shut and gave both Sara and LJ swift jerks of her head. "Come on. We have a lot of ground to cover."

Michael squeezed at Sara's hand before he let her go. "Be careful," he told her.

"You yourself." Sara followed Jane and LJ out of the house, to one of the sleek SUVs that both sides seemed to believe were the end-all and be-all when it came to automotive transportation. Her eyes pricked and stung as the sun came far enough over the horizon to strike her full in the face.

"There is an extra pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment if you require them," Jane said as she watched Sara blink rapidly and turn her face away. Her tone walked a curious line between concerned and detached, as if she already knew exactly why Sara needed to turn her face away from them all until she had composed herself again, and was only holding back because she did not want to push to far into someone else's emotional space.

Sara took a swipe at each of her eyes before she put her seatbelt on and turned towards Jane. "I'm fine," she said, and meant it. Jane took her at her word and pulled away from the house.

End Part Fourteen


	15. Chapter 15

Part Fifteen

Alex continued to stare down at Cameron's sleeping form for several moments after Tancredi had excused herself into the kitchen. It was barely past sunrise; in Durango, Cameron would have slept for another two hours, at least, before he got up and ran down the hallway towards the living room so that he could watch his cartoons. Maybe he would climb onto the kitchen counters first so that he could make himself a bowl of cereal. It was more likely, though, that he would soon go running down the hallway again and into the master bedroom so that he could take a flying leap into the center of the bed and demand either pancakes or French toast out of his startled and sleepy parents. It had been a long time since Alex had lived in the same house as his family. He wondered if Cameron still did that.

Cameron muttered something in his sleep and rolled over. Alex's breath caught in his throat, never mind that Tancredi had said that the amount of sleeping that Cameron was doing did not mean that anything was wrong yet. His breath exited his lungs on a long, whistling sigh as Cameron settled down again, and suddenly he could not be in the room any longer. He exited for the nearest hallway, or which the spider's web of the house thankfully seemed to have plenty.

Alex had been seeking a moment alone in which to deal with his own family issues, certainly not to intrude upon another man's. He walked into Burrows and his son having an angry conversation with one another and took a reflexive step back, wondering how it was that he had managed to pick the single hallway that was occupied when he had been thinking moments before that he was lucky to be in a house that had more than its fair share. A second later he thought wryly that it was only fair that he be part of everyone else's family issues, when they all seemed to know the intimate details of his. Alex was giving in to his better instincts and turning to go all the same when Lincoln snarled, in a voice that still carried down the hall, "Absolutely not." Alex was beginning to understand more and more why Scofield was the mastermind behind the Fox River escape. Burrows' talents for subtlety and the ability to lie low actually seemed to run into the negative numbers.

LJ was leaning back against the wall, arms folded over his chest, not meeting his father's eyes. Alex had seen more than a few other angry teenagers standing with that exact posture. Juvenile offenders all, as Alex's own kid was still small enough that he was much more likely to express his displeasure by throwing himself to the floor.

"I can help," LJ insisted, even though his defiance was somewhat mitigated by the fact that he was speaking in a low and sullen mumble. His sneakers were probably very impressed; with his head dipped down like that, they were the primary audience.

"By getting yourself arrested again?" Burrows glanced up once, made a face when he saw that Alex was leaning his shoulder against the wall and making no moves to leave, and turned back towards his son. Alex did not take the hint and exit as Burrows clearly wanted him to. "You're safer here."

LJ's head snapped up. "Like I was safer at the last place?" A shrill adolescent note had entered his voice. Alex much preferred the adult to the juvenile offenders, never mind that they're tended to be much more hope for the juveniles as a whole. "That guy could have killed all of us."

This was a story that Alex had not heard. He shifted from one foot to the other, his mind going back to Cameron on the living room couch. The boy could not possibly go to Montana with them, but Alex was not about to leave him behind without knowing whether or not he was going to be safe.

Burrows looked up again and let out an angry sigh when he saw that Alex had still not taken himself elsewhere. "You mind giving us a minute here, man?" he growled in Alex's direction. Burrows' voice tilted up at the end, but his expression still denied that it was a question. Wasn't this going to be fun. Alex had six months of Company employ in the back of his head that he could not stop poking at like a sore tooth, a dead wife, and a man that he could still taste. Playing nicely was the last thing on his mind.

"The boy could help," Alex said, still with his arms folded over his chest and with his body leaning up against the wall. "He's old enough to make it his fight, too."

LJ turned and stared hard at Alex, as if stunned to hear that Alex would actually put himself out on a limb from him. "That's for kicking you against the wall."

"Oh." LJ considered for a moment and then gave Alex a sweet smile, born of the sort that only an adolescent could pull forth after being on the verge of a tantrum mere seconds before. "I'm sorry that I punched you with those cuffs."

Alex's mouth twitched in spite of himself and in spite of the fact that Burrows looked as if he would not mind putting his fist into it. "Apology accepted."

"Don't tell me how to parent my kid," Burrows said to Alex. He made a short gesture to LJ indicating that his son should go further down the hallway and let the adults speak amongst themselves. For a moment it looked as if LJ was prepared to argue further until he abruptly decided that discretion was the better part of valor. He drifted down the hallway by several yards so that he could cross his arms over his chest and resume glaring down at his shoes. Alex hoped that they were very bit as impressed now as they had been moments before.

Burrows exhaled when he and Alex were alone again. Alex had not known that Burrows was the type who would even attempt anger management, and was duly impressed. That ran into some tarnish when Burrows followed it up by immediately saying afterwards, "I don't know what you have going on with my brother." Alex leaned backwards slightly, and Burrows eyeballed him. "Yeah, that. Michael's a big boy, that's his business. I think we can both leave what I'll do to you if you dick us over implied, you got me?" Burrows offered him a tight, glittering smile. "Your reasons for being in this fight are your business."

"How generous of you." Burrows' bulk, which Alex was at least willing to grant that he did not think Burrows was using to consciously intimidate, caused him to lift his eyebrows as Burrows pushed close.

Burrows barely rolled his eyes. "But this is about my family now. My kid's not a man," he told Alex. "Not yet. He's not going to run into a man's job before he's ready." There was a raw note, not hidden nearly well enough, in his voice that made Alex pulled back. It softened the eager, bitter need to I do /I that was eating him from the inside out, at least for a few seconds, and nearly changed his mind about whether he ought to push forward at all.

"Might be too late for that," Alex said. He was not thinking about LJ, either, at least entirely; Burrows' shrewd glance knew it. This whole job would have been a lot easier if Burrows could have only been the complete idiot that he was rumored to be. "But I'll lay down money that he will last being left behind for about five minutes before he throws your plan out the window and does whatever he wants." That was a certain family trait, Alex was willing to bet, and had this confirmed for him when Burrows winced. "Finishing up this job doesn't mean that he's going to grow into you, either." A private fear that Alex had not even realized that he had until that moment, that Cameron might grow up to do the same now that the Company had officially placed him within their sights.

It was a spontaneous, uncalculated thing to say, only allowed to slip past Alex's mouth because he had not slept more than three hours over the previous two nights, and he knew as soon as he spoke that it was a mistake. Burrows' eyes blazed at the same time that his lips pressed themselves into a line so thin that they nearly disappeared altogether. If he was going to punch Alex in the mouth, then that was going to be the moment. Alex gave a wry thought towards what _that_ would do to the tenuous alliance that no one seemed to know quite what to do with before Burrows flashed Alex a more dangerous smile than any that he had given before. He said, "At LJ's age, it would not have occurred to me to put my ass one the line for anyone except for Michael or myself at all. He ain't going to turn out like me." Burrows didn't bring Cameron into it, which was nice of him, even though Alex had to admit that he had left that door wide open by bringing up LJ first. Or maybe it was only enlightened self-interest; Alex was so keyed-up that he was not sure what he would have done if Burrows had crossed that line.

"LJ!" Burrows turned and bellowed at such volume that Alex would be amazed if the entire house did not hear him. LJ came back, still wearing that particularly adolescent blend of nervousness and defiance. "I won't even be over the horizon before you're running off, will I?" Burrows asked him. When LJ's response to look down at his shoes again-frankly, Alex thought that Burrows should be heartened that his son was such a bad liar-Burrows sighed from deep within his chest. "Do everything that Jane says." His tone did not allow any room for LJ to argue with him even if the boy had been so inclined. "_Everything_. She knows what she's doing."

Alex had not actually expected any of his arguments to work, and he blinked. It would appear that Burrows and Jane had a closer bond between them than Alex had guessed, given the level of trust that Burrows was bestowing upon Jane with very little effort on her part. Alex had been expecting a response more along the lines of Burrows telling him to go fuck himself and that he was not going to let LJ out of his sight again until the boy got married and forcibly ejected his father from the limousine so that he could go on his honeymoon.

"Okay," LJ said, nodding with a little too much eagerness given that he was about to put his life into danger. "Thank you," he said to Alex.

"Don't thank me yet," Alex said in a quiet voice as they headed for the kitchen that seemed to be the house's principle gathering place.

Burrows closed his hand around Alex's bicep before he could go more than a few steps. Suddenly it was becoming hard to remember why brawling with allies was such a bad idea in the first place. Alex pinched at bridge of his nose with his free hand and sighed instead. "What?" he asked.

Burrows flashed one of his smiles again. Must hurt a man's face, smiling that much. "If you fuck over me or my brother, or if you turn on us, they'll never find your body," he said.

Alex removed his arm from Burrows' grasp with a deliberate care. "I thought that you were content to leave that part implied," he said.

"Suddenly I'm in a different mood," Burrows said. Alex's snort turned into a laugh halfway through. It still hurt his throat.

"Fair enough." Alex looked Burrows in the eye and said calmly, "I won't convince you that I'm on your side because the goodness of my heart won't let me be anything else. Once you do murder, you lose the right to make that kind of appeal." Burrows blinked in surprise. "But the only thing I have left that the Company could hold over me is here. I won't turn."

Burrows leaned back, studying Alex for a moment before he nodded. There might have been a kind of respect there, probably because Burrows could not imagine himself doing any differently if LJ had been in Cameron's place. "So long as we have all of the cards on the table." Burrows clapped Alex on the shoulder in a way that was hard enough to sting and still not hard enough to make Alex jump. "Welcome to the team."

Alex had thought that he had crossed that line the day before, but he guessed that it was hard to take anything that a man said seriously when he was also holding a gun close to one's head. Surely the fact that he had lowered it of his own volition counted for something, though. "Glad to be aboard," he answered, drier than any martini, before he followed Burrows down to the hall and towards the kitchen. Burrows' mood was clearly something less than sunshine, and LJ watched him carefully as if he was sure that he was going to be banished back towards a life of safety and boredom at any moment. The glances that he gave Alex when he thought that Alex could not see him suggested that he was not quite sure what to make of his unexpected advocate and was half-waiting for Alex to do an about-face and side with Burrows again.

They reached the kitchen, where most of the house had already gathered and where the final details of the strike were being ironed out. Alex hardly listened to any of them, though the soldier and the agent in both knew that this could prove to be a mistake. He watched Michael instead, watched the way that Scofield-his identity was so slippery to Alex now, so difficult to determine in more ways than one when before it had been so bright and clear-stared back. His face was so still and calm that on anyone else Alex would have said that there was no way for it to be real. Scofield was so different from other men, though, and capable of such a deep and abiding stillness with what seemed like no effort at all that Alex could not be sure. Whatever thoughts were going on behind those clear blue eyes were kept shuttered and for private consumption only, frustrating Alex by being the rare puzzle that he could not crack. He had grown comfortable in this own bisexuality decades before. The men that he had been involved with before his marriage or during the necessary moments when he had sought physical release in the months afterwards had not always possessed that same comfort. If Michael was troubled and wanted it to be over, or if he was the exact opposite and thought that it was just beginning, then he was keeping his own counsel and giving nothing away. Damn him.

Aldo and Jane made the final preparations amongst themselves for the half that was returning to Chicago, and Jane began to leave with Tancredi and LJ close behind her. She was stopped momentarily by Aldo touching at her elbow.

"We'll probably be done before you are," Aldo told her. "Wait for my call."

Jane dipped her head. They left. Scofield watched Tancredi go with the first hint of a crack in the deep calm with which he had covered himself.

"Daddy?" The first sign that Alex had of Cameron being awake was his voice and his hand fisting into the leg of Alex's pants. He put his hand down onto the top of Cameron's head and felt how silken his hair still was as Cameron peeped around his thigh at the kitchen's assembled crowd. He had not been so shy around strangers since he was a toddler.

"Hey, buddy. Did you sleep well?"

"I slept fuzzy."

"Ah." Aldo gave Alex a significant look before he inclined his head towards the front door. He might have a point, but hell with him if he thought that Alex was going to leave before he had a chance to say good-bye to his son.

Alex turned and knelt down at Cameron's level, ignoring the assembled kitchen behind him. Cameron rubbed at the crusts of sleep in the corners of each eye and regarded him with a solemn expression. Alex remembered how Tancredi had told him that it was too early to tell how traumatized Cameron had been by what he had been through, and that the only option would be to get him back into a stable environment as soon as possible. Alex had no problem following that prescription to the letter. As soon as this matter was settled so that he knew that Cameron was not going to be gunned down in the middle of the street for sharing one half of his father's DNA, Alex's first order of business was going to be his son.

"Listen, I have to go away for the next couple of days, but I-" Alex began, only to halt when he felt Cameron go rigid beneath the hands that Alex had placed on his shoulders. "What is it?"

"Mommy said that she might have to go away, too," Cameron whispered.

Oh, Pam. Alex missed his ex wife so much in that moment that it was a physical ache in his chest, as if some cruel son of a bitch had turned a part of him into lead without informing him first. "I'm going to come back," Alex told Cameron in a tone that tried to be soothing, only to miss its mark and come out fierce instead. "I'm going to come back, okay? There is just one more thing that I have to do, and then I promise you that I'm going to come back." Alex could sense that both of the other fathers in the room chose that moment to swiftly look at the floor just as he could sense that Michael was watching him, and he cared about as much for either. He would break every single law of heaven and hell, if that was what it took, in order to keep this promise. The laws of earth were nothing in comparison.

Cameron nodded slowly, though he had transferred his grip from Alex's pants to the sleeves of his shirt and was hanging on so tightly that Alex was sure that if he stood Cameron would continue to dangle there without slipping an inch. He looked only seconds away from tears.

"These people." Alex had to pause around a lump that rose in his throat without warning and was not nearly so obedient when it came to departing again. "Ah, these people are going to look after you until I can get back, okay? They're very nice, and they're going to make sure that you stay safe." Cameron looked over at Monica and Ben, his expression dubious. If Alex had been anywhere smiling at that point, his son's face would have pulled one out of him.

Monica did not strike Alex as a person who had been around anyone under the age of twenty-five since she had been a child herself, but she smiled gamely. Ben knelt down so that he was also on Cameron's level and said, "Hey, Cameron, do you like computers? Because I have some great games on mine." Ben noticed Aldo stiffen and added, "All of the security protocols are in place."

Cameron turned back to his father. The way that his eyebrow quirked up was suddenly, shockingly similar to the way that Pam's had done the same whenever she was telling Alex, sure, try to tell her another one, maybe I'll buy that Arizona beach house this time around. Alex had to take a breath and collect himself before he could continue. "See? Everything is going to be fine. I'll come back in a few days, and then we can go home."

"But I want to go home _now_." The tears that Cameron had stayed in control of until that point spilled over at last. His lower lip came out to match it, and he had begun to shake. "Why do you have to _leave_?"

Alex pulled Cameron against his chest and held him there while he stroked at his son's hair with his free hand. Cameron's shaking lessened. It did not stop altogether. "I know, buddy, I know," he whispered. "I know you don't want me to go. I don't want to know, either. I just have one more thing that I have to do. Then everything can be normal again." Alex had been promising himself that it would be only one more thing and then everything would be normal again for the past several weeks. He hoped that Cameron believed it more than Alex himself did at this point.

Cameron made a snuffling sound and did not want to let go. Alex had to be the one to end the embrace, and even then Cameron took the hand that Monica held out reluctantly and as if he thought that she really intended to bite him. "I'm going to be back in a few days," Alex told Cameron. His voice was shaking, and everyone else in the room had averted their eyes. "You have my word." Cameron nodded, but he still watched Alex go as if he was sure that he would never see him again and wanted to commit every detail to memory. He did not cry, as Alex had expected him to cry, or cling to Alex and beg him not to go. Cameron stood like a small soldier instead, stoic in ways that he certainly had not when Alex had left him last.

Alex hated himself, the universe, and the Company in equal measure as he strode from the house and towards the vehicle that was waiting for them. Michael and his brother were wise; they remained silent, though Alex could still feel Michael watching him.

"It's best if you don't make promises that you're not sure you can keep," Aldo said to Alex in a low voice. Michael had clearly gotten that intelligence of his from his mother.

Alex wanted to strike out. He said instead in a voice that was every bit as low as Aldo's, and so much colder, "You don't know how much I'm willing to do to keep this one." It was a sentiment that Aldo seemed to understand, for he did not try to speak on the subject again.

Alex was sure that he would have lashed out and figure out how to deal with an enraged Lincoln Burrows after the fact if Michael told him again how sorry he was that things had twisted sideways. When Michael instead only let his hand fall onto Alex's shoulder for the briefest of seconds before he got into the vehicle, all of the air ran out of Alex's lungs on a long sigh.

They drove off into the sun. Alex could not stop thinking of desperadoes as they did so, heading for a conflict where the outcome was entirely uncertain.

End Part Fifteen


	16. Chapter 16

Part Sixteen

Sara expected Chicago to be different. She did not know why. She had been gone only a few days, and while she did feel different herself-stripped down, more sure of what she was capable of-surely the difference was not that great. The core of her was still the same woman who had stared down an assassin, stolen a dead woman's identity, and held a gun on a federal agent. It was even, when Sara had time to realize that this woman was really her, the same city where she had found her father dead. The tall, solemn buildings did not seem to mourn him the way that Sara felt that they ought to, since she herself had been forced to put her own grief on hold.

She would feel better once she was able to lay him to rest, Sara decided. Once she had fulfilled that goal, even symbolically, by finding gout what it was that he had left behind for her to find, then everything else would fall into place like a row of dominoes.

Sara lifted her head from where she had been resting it against the SUV's window and rubbed at the kinks in her neck. In the backseat, LJ kept jerking his head up as if he was going to give in to the urge to sleep himself at any moment. No one had really been able to rest in the motel the night before, and it was still so early that the sun was more of an ambitious goal than it was a reality. Only Jane seemed fixed and alert. Sara slid her a glance over the console, noted how easy Jane's posture was in her seat and how relaxed her hands were around the steering wheel.

Jane was clearly utterly terrified.

"They should have called us by now, shouldn't they?" Sara asked.

Jane flicked her a look and turned back towards the road before Sara could read her expression as anything more than a snapshot taken mostly out of focus. She shook her head, once, and then reached for her cup of coffee. It barely touched Jane's lips before she was setting it down again. It seemed to Sara that Jane was carefully measuring out each of her reactions into their correct portions, pantomiming the correct emotions rather than actually feeling them. She had not know that Jane could ever be moved enough to give a damn about even pretending.

"Aldo's gone longer than this without contacting me," Jane said. Her hand hovered over her cellular phone for a moment before she closed it into a fist. A second drink of coffee did not seem to settle her. "It's fine."

'But you're still scared,' Sara thought. They were supposed to be the backup mission, the one that would close the deal if the fact of a living, breathing dead man was not enough to drag the Company blinking forth into the light. Sara hadn't paused then to wonder if the tall buildings around them would not have a few more bodies before it was all said and done. She did now as she turned back towards her window and found a cuticle to chew on.

"We have a decision to make," Jane said abruptly from the driver's seat. She pulled the SUV into the nearly empty parking lot of a convenience store and cut the engine. LJ stirred in the backseat and rubbed at his eyes.

"We there yet?" he asked.

"Close," Sara said before she turned back to Jane. "We do?"

Jane swished the remains of her coffee around in the cup. For the first time, Sara could see the fine tremble in her hands that Jane could not quite control. "Your face is well-known by now," she said to Sara. "Everyone loves a scandal and everyone loves a love story, especially when it's forbidden. You and Michael gave them both." Sara felt her mouth twist. "You had hardly jumped bail by an hour before you were on CNN."

"So what does that mean for us?" Sara asked.

Given something to do that was within her wheelhouse and that would distract her from her own worry, Jane relaxed again before Sara's very eyes. She first at the gun in her shoulder holster and then at a small golden crucifix around her neck before she said, "Wherever you go, the law is going to follow after you very quickly. That means that the Company will be only a few paces behind them. Everything that Ben was able to dig up will be available to them, too."

Sara shook her head, still not getting it. She had a feeling that Jane was struggling not to roll her eyes at her, for the blonde touched at her gun again before answering. "We can only hit one of those places before the Company knows that we're in the area. First one ought to be a piece of cake. Second one will get trickier. We might have to abandon it."

It was not until Jane lifted her eyebrow at her, waiting, that Sara realized that the decision was being left up to her. She leaned back against her door, surprised. Sara had somehow thought that her presence on this mission would amount to being a face that could gain them access to her father's effects, and possibly as a getaway driver. Two weeks before she never would have thought herself capable of taking such a major role in treason.

Two weeks before, she had also not survived two separate assassination attempts. Sara twisted a strand of hair around her fingers and ignored Jane's impatient sound. She was learning that she capable of a lot of things that she had not thought possible before. "The cigar bar," she said at last.

Jane nodded and started the engine again. "Your turf, your choice," she said. "Just please tell me that you're going on more than a coin toss here."

"No," Sara said. "My dad was carrying the key to the cigar bar on his person when he died. He probably went there to hide the tape."

"Could have still gone to the box first," Jane said. She sounded more like a schoolteacher than she did a dangerous killer, suddenly, and oddly prim. Sara looked at her askance. "Why wouldn't he have?"

"You're a crappy actress," Sara told Jane in a flat voice. "You could at least pretend that you're not testing me here."

Jane's smile was glittering and dangerous even when she was trying to be friendly. "I wasn't hired to be subtle," she agreed before she made a carry-on gesture. Sara had still not answered.

"Who stops off for a leisurely cigar after learning about whatever is on that tape?" Sara asked. "Quick drink, maybe." Her father was not a drinker except under the most extreme of circumstances, and even then Sara had smelled no alcohol on him when she had found his body. "No, it's the cigar club. If we have only one shot at this, that's the best one to take."

Jane had been turning the SUV towards the cigar club before Sara had even finished spinning out her reasoning. Her expression was approving. "Very good," she said before she threw back the rest of her coffee in one long swallow. If Jane's grimace was anything to go by, it had long since gone cold. Sara did not see how Jane could stand to take in so much caffeine, when Sara's own nerves were twitching and jittering badly enough on their own.

Sara felt her eyebrow going up of its own accord. "Well, as long as I'm getting a gold star," she said in a tone so dry that Agent Mahone himself would have had to approve. The cigar club was in sight. Sara could feel her stomach tightening accordingly, until it had formed a ball so tight that she was half-convinced that she was going to form her own personal black hole right there in the center of the vehicle. It was not about the danger alone. Sara could think back across her childhood and recall a great many times when her father had smelled of cigar smoke, most especially during the early days of her rebellion. Mom had been getting really bad by then, and he had taken breaks from the two of them as often as possible, but he had never mentioned this place. It was staggering to Sara to realize how little she actually knew about her father.

'You and me, Michael,' Sara thought in a sour internal voice. 'Two peas in a pod.' Or separate pods, as the case might be now, but Sara was resolving not to think about that again until she had cleared some of the bigger items off of her desk first.

Jane pulled the SUV into a parking spot and cut the engine. She studied the building with cool, assessing eyes, her expression turning hungry for a moment with whatever it was that was flashing through her mind. Sara actually preferred this Jane to the softer and more human Jane that had been shown to her before. This Jane knew what she was doing.

"I'll go in with you," Jane said. She touched at her gun and crucifix again. Sara hoped that she was not planning on keeping that up when they went inside, or else the entire job could become very complicated very quickly. "But I'll have to stay at the bar while you retrieve the tape. Members and surviving relatives only."

Meaning that if the situation really turned sideways on them, Sara was probably going to be on her own. Even if Jane did realize that something was wrong, there would be a delay before she was able to come to the rescue. Sara paused for a moment so that she could process all of this before she slipped a baseball cap onto her head to hide her bruise and said, "All right." She was the recipient of another approving look from Jane. Sara wondered for a moment if Jane maybe could have been a schoolteacher in another life. An incredibly terrifying schoolteacher who would have had the best attendance in the school district, and who would never have to fight with students in order to get them to turn their homework in on time because they wouldn't dare.

"What do I do?" LJ asked from the backseat. He had shaken off the last of his sleepy demeanor several minutes before. So had Sara, even though she and LJ had not had so much as a sip of coffee between them. For the moment, they were adrenaline twins.

Jane barely threw so much as a glance towards the backseat. "You're going to watch the car," she said.

LJ's face twisted into the ugly and somehow endearing expression that only a teenager could get. Everything was life or death to them. It wasn't his fault that he had been thrown into a situation where he was very literally wrapped up in matters of life and death. "I can help!" he said hotly in a voice that was probably more shrill than he had intended in order to get what he wanted. "If it's because I've never done anything like this before, Sara doesn't know what she's doing, either!" LJ shot Sara an apologetic look as she said it. Sara only lifted her shoulders into a slight shrug. Much as she was determined to go along with the plan, she couldn't really argue with that logic.

Color rose in Jane's cheeks for the first time. Her hands clenched around the steering wheel and she exhaled a shaky breath from between her teeth. It as the most overt sign of emotion that she had given either of them yet, and Sara and LJ both stared at her in surprise and something that was nearly horror.

"I'm not going to tell your father that I have your body in the backseat," Jane snapped at LJ. Her voice cracked, betraying her, and she threw a glance down at the unresponsive cellular phone before she turned a stoic gaze back out the windshield.

'Oh,' Sara thought as she understood. It was not what she had expected-she had thought that Jane was twisting herself sick with worry over Aldo alone-but stranger things had happened. Prison doctors and structural engineers turned bank robber. Structural engineer turned bank robber and federal agents turned murderer turned freedom fighter.

Jane did not look as if she was inclined to elaborate while LJ was clearly gearing himself up for another outburst, and they could only sit here for so long before someone peeked in and noticed that one face in particular was extremely recognizable. "We're all worried about your dad and uncle," Sara cut in before LJ could get started up again. He made a face at her, having a typical teenager's tolerance for being spoken down to. "Jane has a point. Your dad will be a lot more worried if we have to bring you back hurt or dead. You're not a kid, fine. Don't put us into that position."

Bringing his father into hit was a low blow, Sara knew as soon as LJ leaned back against his seat. He sucked in his breath and fixed Sara with a wounded look. Sara then did not hold in against him when he snapped back at her, "What if I have to tell Uncle Mike that you're dead?"

'He won't care as much as you think,' Sara nearly said back, and only just stopped herself. It was petty on the one hand and untrue on the other. The whole situation would be so much easier to bear if she did not think that Michael was every bit as confused by it as she was, and if she really could convince herself that he did not care.

'This is what happens when you get pulled into arguments with teenagers,' Sara thought as she looked at LJ's defiant and nearly triumphant expression. 'So learn from the mistake and don't do it again.'

"Your uncle cares for me very much," Sara replied in a soft voice that made LJ lean back and blink. He had been expecting her to get angry and yell back just as he was yelling. "And I know that he will grieve for me if I don't come back. But I'm not his kid. It is _nothing_ compared to what Lincoln will feel if get killed in this." The way that her own father had stepped in again and again to pull her from the fire and ignored each time the way that she had snapped at his hand for his trouble was all the testament that Sara needed to that.

LJ shrank further back into his seat, lowering his head, until he looked much younger than he actually was. Sara felt bad even as she watched LJ gear up for another argument that they did not have the fucking time for now. Jane sighed from the front seat, pulled the keys from the ignition, and turned. Sara did not realize that Jane had grabbed the cellular phone until she thrust it into LJ's hand. LJ looked nearly as surprised to receive it as Sara was to see Jane willingly give it up.

"If this rings and distracts me in there, someone will be hurt," Jane told LJ. "Keep the car running. We may need to get away quickly."

"Oh-okay," LJ said, looking down at both of the items that had been handed to him. For better or worse, he might now be the first person to hear what had happened to his father and his uncle.

"That was nice of you," Sara said as the two of them exited the SUV and walked across the street. She adjusted her baseball cap; with her bruise, it was less than comfortable, but she was already on CNN as it was. Jane did not button up her suit jacket, but she did pull it more closely around herself and straightened out the fabric until the gun was no longer visible. Thank God for small favors.

Jane cut Sara a look and then sniffed. "It was necessary. I was telling the truth, if that phone had gone off I would have answered, and maybe gotten you killed because of it."

"Right." Sara could not imagine what sort of life that one would have to live in order to make an act of simple compassion into something that brought about defensive reaction. It made the assessing looks that Jane would not stop giving her that much more troubling. "Who knows what might happen if you're actually human." Jane had fallen behind her, but Sara still did not need to turn her head in order to know that Jane was pulling a face at her.

They had reached the door. "You're on your own," Jane murmured against Sara's ear. She pressed her fingers against the small of Sara's back. It was not to urge Sara forward, for Sara was already moving fairly quickly on her own, but to offer a few last seconds of solidarity. She peeled away as Sara approached the attendant.

"Hi," she said, pasting on the most winning smile that she was capable of. The attendant's eyes had widened and his body language had stiffened from the second that he saw her, though he had schooled his face back into blankness within seconds. All that Sara could think was, 'Oh, fuck.' Jane had already glided out of sight, even if there was something that she could have done outside of shooting the place up. Sara was on her own. She wondered if she should not have done something with her hair, as it was her most distinctive feature, before she set out. It might have delayed the attendant's recognizing her for a few moments, at least. Sara tucked her hair behind her ears and kept walking.

"Can I help you?" the attendant asked. Oh, he was good. Sara could hardly see any betraying flicker of recognition in his eyes at all any longer, and she knew from liars. Being a drug addict had a way of instilling that kind of recognition in people.

"I'm looking for my father's box. Frank Tancredi?" The smile was making Sara's face hurt at this point. She hoped that she still looked natural there, and not at all like a deranged lunatic who had jumped bail on charges that she had had a better than decent chance of beating before she had gone running off to meet her treasonous, bank-robbing boyfriend and his murderous brother.

God, Sara hated CNN.

"Sure," the attendant told her when she had shown both the key and her ID. It made Sara twitchy to pull out her actual identity now, and she had been on the run for less than a week. She was making out to be a great fugitive already. "Right this way."

Sara accepted the directions that were given to her and then walked alone down a long hallway, the key to her father's box clutched within her sweaty hand. There were people on either side of her, seated in comfortable chairs, smoking, and talking amongst themselves, but she still felt horribly alone. She threw a glance over her shoulder, hoping against hope for a flash of platinum hair, but none came. Jane did a lot of things. Lying, Sara thought, did not happen to be one of them.

Sara tuned out the hush of conversations all around her, inserted the key into its appropriate slot once she had reached the box, and turned. The lock made a satisfying clicking sound. Exhaling, Sara pulled the box out and looked inside. The only thing within it was a flash drive. Sara snatched it up and shoved it into the front pocket of her jeans so that she could go before her disappointment got the better of her. It was stupid and petty, but she had been unable to stop herself from hoping that there would be a message in there from her father. He had not planned to die or for her to find the key and carry out his mission for him; it was only an accident that Sara had stumbled in on it before the Company had had time to fully clean up after himself. Still…she had hoped. Michael was rubbing off on her to a greater extent than she had realized.

Sara's gestures were short and a little angry as she slammed the box shut, so that it made a clanging sound that echoed and set Sara's teeth on edge before she was able to get herself under control again. There was no point in stealth, not when numerous people knew that she was here and who she was. There was plenty of reason, however, for her to move quickly. She could save the tears for later.

Sara took a swipe at the few that had dared to well up all the same as she turned to go. She swore that she could hear the far-off cry of police sirens, and wondered if Jane could also hear them.

A hand grabbed at Sara's wrist before she could get more than halfway around, startling her and causing her to drop the box key. In spite of the neat, tailored suit that ended the wrist, the grip was strong. Sara did not think that the owner did anything so sedate as work out in a gym, surrounded by free weights. Not unless he took a break sometimes to hit people with them.

A peek at her attacker's face, and Sara knew that she was right. Definitely swung the weights into someone's face every now and again, purely for fun. "Hello, Sara," Kellerman said to her. "Sooner or later, we're going to get this right."

"Hello, Lance," Sara replied coolly. Her voice was steady in spite of the fact that her heart was thundering in her chest. She could be proud of herself for that. Sara could also not seem to make herself stop referring to Kellerman as Lance even as she had known for that past two and a half days that that was not his real name. "That's a great idea. You should let me go so that we can talk about it." Her voice was becoming high and breathy; okay, _now_ she was going to take the opportunity to freak right out. That was comforting.

Kellerman actually smiled at her. The fear was pushed to the side by that smile long enough for Sara to struggle with the need to punch him right in the face. She was on the verge of doing exactly that, screaming for all that she was worth, and taking her chances with the legitimate police until Kellerman used his free hand to push back his jacket. Shoulder holsters were all the rage these days.

"I'm afraid that I can't do that, Sara," Kellerman said. He punctuated his words with a nasty squeeze to Sara's forearm that made her bones ache. He was saying her name a great deal. That was supposed to be a good sign, ordinarily, proof that the criminal was now seeing his victim as a person rather than a mission to be carried out. Sara somehow did not think that Kellerman's mind worked like those of most people. She pulled back on the grip that Kellerman was keeping on her arm experimentally and was rewarded with a twist so hard that it made her gasp and would leave deep bruises etched across her skin later.

She had hit very hard the day before, Sara remembered now. Apparently, he was the kind of man that held a grudge.

"You shouldn't try to scream," Kellerman told her in that pleasant voice, that trust-me voice. He had a choirboy's face that he was twisting up and ruining with that smile of his. "So far as everyone here is concerned, I'm the good guy."

"The sirens," Sara managed around her dry mouth. She still sounded normal, if frightened, much to her satisfaction. The edges of panic that she had been feeling moments before were long gone. They had been burned away.

"I work with the Secret Service," Kellerman told her. "My custody over you is completely legit." He shook her once, carelessly and as if he was delivering a lesson to a recalcitrant child, before he let her go and stepped back. Sara's fingers twitched, but Kellerman was swift in pulling his gun from its holster and pointing it at her.

"Get the key," Kellerman ordered her in a soft voice. Sara had forgotten that she had even dropped it. She knelt and scooped it up from the floor as Kellerman continued, "Now open up the box."

Sara nodded and turned to do so, though she looked over Kellerman's shoulder for a flash of blonde hair as she did so. There was nothing, of course. 'Tell a frigging lie, Jane,' Sara thought in an internal voice so hysterical that she nearly broke her promise not to panic and fall into giggles. 'Once will not hurt you.'

Sara opened up the box and then stepped back so that Kellerman could peer inside. He never turned the gun away from her, not even for that single second that Sara thought she would need, but he forgot to take the key away from her. Sara wiggled it down between her fingers and stroked at the copper, now warm and slick from the way that she had been clutching it in the center of her palm.

Kellerman barely looked into the box for a second before he was slamming it shut with enough force to make the entire thing shake. "Where is it, Sara?" he asked her. For the first time, his voice was trembling with a fine-tuned anger. Sara had seen how singularly terrifying Kellerman had been while he was pretending to be pleasant only a few minutes before, and she was not impressed.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sara said. She tucked the key back into her palm so that she could rub at her injured forearm. It both eased the hurt and made her look smaller and more vulnerable than she actually was, less likely to launch an attack. Sara did not know where this sudden thought came from, but she would accept it as long as it was there. "All that I knew was to come here."

Kellerman rolled his eyes up towards the ceiling and smiled faintly, as if he thought that it was just so gosh-darned cute that Sara would still try that lie even though they both knew that it was untrue. "Sara," he chided her. "I have access to all of the information that your new friends have." Something must have shown on Sara's face, no matter how hard she was trying to remain stoic, for Kellerman gave that disturbing chuckle again. "There's a blonde sitting at the bar out there, playing with a martini even though it's nine in the morning and hoping that no one notices that she hasn't even take a sip of it." He leaned close, into her face. "Oh, I could tell you some tales out of school about her."

Sara still preferred the shark that she knew to the one that she didn't, especially since the more shapely blonde was not prone to pointing a gun at her. She put her face back into those lines of confused fear and took a step back until she could feel her spine pressing against the rows of private boxes behind her. As if he was being pulled by her own personal gravity, Kellerman flowed forward and into her personal space again. His face was very close to hers. If her father had been alive, Sara thought in a savage moment, she might have kicked him in the shins for choosing a club that was so clearly and chronically understaffed.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sara insisted again. Lack of panic or not, she was not having to work hard to put that edge of desperation in her voice. "I just came back and laid low around Chicago until I was able to get my nerve up-"

Kellerman used his free hand to punch hard at the cabinet beside Sara's head. She flinched once, and then flinched again as Kellerman forced the gun up against her ribs. The key nearly slipped away from her grasp and down to the floor where it would not do her any good at all. Sara noticed, in this strange and detached way that she had fallen into of picking up very detail that popped out at her and tucking it away for future use, that Kellerman had taken a glance over his shoulder to ensure that the hallway was clear before he had pushed himself even further into her personal space. Whatever it was that he had told the staff in order to keep them away from this place, it was not going according to plan. She could scream, then, and pull people here so that they could see for themselves. She could also get a bullet into her abdomen. It would be an ugly way to die.

"Do not lie to me, Sara," Kellerman told her. She could feel his breath on her cheek, and it made her want to twist her face away. "Believe it or not, I do not want to hurt you, but I also can't help you once you start lying to me. What have you done with the tape?" He used his free hand to begin mechanically patting her down, his movements brisk and efficient. Kellerman's hand passed less than six inches away from where he would have felt the lump against Sara's thigh; he would find it on the next try.

Sara saw a flash of platinum blonde over Kellerman's shoulder, and only for a second before Jane tucked herself safely out of sight again. It was still all that Sara could do to keep her knees from unhinging. "Okay," she said before she paused to lick at her lips. Kellerman's hand stilled. Less than two inches. "My dad gave me a tape to listen to, but it's not here, it's-"

Jane popped up again from shadow and nothing in the hallway behind Kellerman, drawing her weapon with a movement so smooth and fluid that it made Sara think that Jane may even have been born with it in her hand. As she took aim, Sara realized that with Kellerman's body pushed down so tightly over hers there was no guarantee that Jane would be able to get a shot into him that would not kill Sara as well. Nor was she certain, even now, that Jane would hesitate.

Jane showed not so much as a flicker of indecision before she fired the gun. The bullet struck the cabinet only inches from Kellerman's head, pinging off metal and sending splinters of wood into both of their heads as it ricocheted. Kellerman's only reaction was to draw in his breath sharply before he began whirling around to face the new threat, dragging Sara along with him. The gun pulled away from Sara's ribcage by a few inches.

A few inches was all the chance that Sara had been waiting for. She grabbed at Kellerman's wrist and twisted it to push the gun further away from herself, and she fought back the urge to yelp as it went off and sprayed the both of them with more shrapnel. Kellerman was strong. Sara knew from the first second that he began forcing the gun back around to end her that she was not going to be able to wrestle it from him this time.

Sara dropped the key that she had been clutching in her palm down between her fingers and gouged it as hard as she could into the soft flesh of Kellerman's cheek. Only a split-second's worth of recalculation prevented her from putting it directly into his eye; Sara would wonder at herself later. Adrenaline made her both strong and ruthless, and the end result was a deep red furrow that immediately began spilling blood down Kellerman's face. The immaculate white of his dress shirt turned crimson as it drank it up.

Kellerman gasped again, though the way that he pressed his lips together again immediately afterwards suggested that what he had really wanted to do was yell, and loosened his grip on Sara's arm by those crucial few millimeters that she needed to wrench free. She scraped her back scooting along the cabinet far enough to put herself out of Kellerman's reach before she broke and ran to Jane. Jane's expression did not change as Sara reached her; the only part of her body that moved was her finger against the trigger. Sara heard the boom, but it was not until she turned around that she realized that Jane had struck her target this time. Kellerman dropped without a sound, a bloody red rose that she could not take her eyes away from spreading across his chest. Sara put her hand over her mouth, her doctor's instincts overwhelming her and propelling her forward before she could halt herself. Only Jane's hand around her bicep pulled her back.

"Don't be an idiot," Jane hissed into Sara's ear as she began to yank Sara towards the door.

Sara did not resist, but neither did she look away from the small and crumpled form that Kellerman had made as he had fallen to the floor. He was not moving. He had been planning on torturing her, but Sara still could not stop herself from waiting with bated breath for him to move.

"I'm a doctor," she protested. Sara did not need to see Jane's look of exasperation to know how silly that sounded. She hadn't been a doctor and nothing else since she had deliberately left the infirmary door unlocked. It was that the outlines of the something else that she could be were so large and so difficult to wrap her head around, and she had been given so little time to stop and catch her breath.

Jane did not let Sara go even as the two of them were sprinting down the hallway and towards the door, as if she thought that the leash was the only thing that was keeping Sara from bolting back in the direction that they had come. She might not have been wrong; Sara was not sure. She heard a roaring sound in her ears and was only barely aware of the gun that Jane raised at curious employees in order to keep them at a healthy distance. A series of yells rose up from the back room as Kellerman was discovered. From far away, the sirens began to cry again. Kellerman must have been using his connections in order to keep them at a distance so that he could collect her himself. She wondered if the sirens were now playing his dirge.

"Good girl," Jane whispered against Sara's ear as they reached the door and she was finally able to release Sara's arm. Was she really as pale and disjointed as all that?

Jane looked out across the street and swore explosively. It took Sara a moment longer to realize that the SUV was gone, and so was LJ along with it. "That fucking kid, I'm going to murder him!" Jane looked over her shoulder, back into the cigar club, with her lips pressed into a thin line before she glared at Sara. It was clear that she considered LJ to be Sara's project and Sara's alone.

"Have faith," Sara said, Michael's line, even though she was reeling on her feet and didn't feel like having faith in anything at the moment.

Jane snorted when a glare alone was not enough to express her displeasure, but she was cut off by a set of screaming tires and a roaring engine. The SUV whipped around a corner towards them and then came to a halt that made the brakes yelp like dogs. It nearly threw LJ over the steering wheel and into the windshield inside.

"Shut up," Jane said to Sara even though Sara was not saying a word, and then nudged Sara towards the backseat. Sara stumbled in without complaining and took several shallow breaths as Jane hopped into the front seat and signaled for LJ to drive. He obeyed at a speed that would have made any Drivers Ed teacher's hair turn white.

"Why did you leave?" Jane asked LJ as he pulled away from the curb. There was an edge to her voice that made Sara raise her head, and Jane snapped, "Put your head down between your knees, you look like you're going to pass out." Sara obeyed as the world tilted from side to side on her as if she was standing on the deck of a restless ship.

"There was a guy in a suit watching the car," LJ said as he took a corner fast enough to hurl Sara against the door. She forgot Jane's order to keep her head down until she no longer felt like fainting and took a peek out of the vehicle's back window. There did not appear to be anyone following them. LJ was driving like a NASCAR hopeful on an adrenaline high solely because he wanted to, then. Sara guessed that she could sympathize. "I thought that he was either Company or a cop and decided that it would be better to be on the move."

"Easy." Jane reached out and grabbed the wheel as LJ took another hair-raising turn in a vehicle that was not particularly known for its good behavior in the middle of them. LJ slowed them all down, albeit reluctantly. "Good decision." LJ took his eyes off of the road to stare at her and nearly demolished a mailbox as a result. "Did the phone ring?"

"No." LJ sounded scared, trying to hide it, and not doing a particularly good job. He wasn't a kid, Sara thought, but neither was he a man just yet. Maybe his father and Jane had a point there.

Her head feeling clearer, Sara sat up more fully in her seat and rubbed at her face. Jane looked at her over the headrest with a furrowed brow. "I'm fine," Sara said. "How close are we to my father's bank?"

The furrow deepened. "I thought that the tape was at the cigar club," Jane said.

"It was." Sara pushed her hair behind her ears and tried to clear the clouds from her mind. It was possible, even probable, that she had allowed a man to die. Even knowing what he would have been willing to do to her in order to get that tape, it was a thought that did not sit easily with her.

"Here," Sara said as she realized that Jane was continuing to look at her as if she thought that Sara was about to pull a gun or worse, go into hysterics, at any moment. She dug about in her jeans until she found the tape and then placed it into Jane's palm.

Jane closed her hand around it slowly. "You performed very well in there," she told Sara. "Few people who have not received the correct training would have been able to remain that calm. It was impressive."

"Thanks." Sara spoke cautiously, unused to Jane doling out compliments purely for the sake of them and sure that there was a hidden motive waiting to be discovered. Small wonder that LJ had also looked gobsmacked when Jane had complimented him. "I didn't-um, I had to cut my residency short for personal reasons-" Rehab counted as a personal reason. "-but the part that I stayed around for was in the ER, and at Fox River I dealt with a lot of trauma injuries. You learn not to panic."

"It was impressive," Jane repeated again before she secreted the tape away in her jacket. She inadvertently displayed her holster and the gun again as she did so. "So I can't help but wonder why you're determined to sabotage it now." Sara glanced up. Jane continued in the most gentle voice that Sara had ever heard her use. "Sara, we talked about this before we went in. It was one of the other. Now that the Company knows that you're back in the city, they'll beef up security at you father's bank in anticipation of a visit there, too."

"No, they won't," Sara said. "They'll figure that we got what we came for, that we were spooked by the close call, and that we're going to head right out of town again." Maybe she impressed Jane again with her assessment, maybe she didn't. Jane's face was giving nothing away.

"We did get what we came for."

"It's okay, you don't have to help me." It wouldn't make sense for either of them to put themselves at risk for Sara's own personal matters. Sara was not even sure that it made sense for her to put herself at risk, but she needed to do it. "I'll take care of it myself and meet back up with you guys if I'm able."

Jane sighed and pinched at the bridge of her nose. Rather than asking LJ to pull the vehicle over so that Sara could do just that, as Sara had expected, she instead gave LJ directions to the First Bank of Chicago. He began to follow them immediately.

"You don't-" Sara began.

"Do you know how to use a gun?" Jane interrupted her. "I mean, do you really know who to use a gun, not just how to pull the trigger and hit something that's standing three feet in front of you."

"No." Frank Tancredi had been an old-school Republican, but that did not mean that he had liked guns himself. They had not been permitted in the house. He had not even liked having security around for political events.

"Then yes, I have to." Jane pulled her gun from its holster and ejected the clip so that she could check the number of bullets remaining. "There could be something useful there."

No wonder Jane did not lie very often. She was terrible at it. "Thank you," Sara said.

"Hmm," Jane mused before she told LJ, "Keep the car circling around the block. Sara and I are probably going to be coming out of that bank fast, and you're going to have to drive hard."

"I can do that," LJ said. He seemed more relaxed now that he had been given responsibility for something.

"I'm my father's next of kin," Sara protested. "Whatever he has in that deposit box, I'm entitled to it."

"Are you prepared to prove that and be politely stalled while they call the police?" As the bank came into view, Jane pulled the tape from her jacket and gave it to LJ. He hesitated for a moment before he took it. "If something happens to me or to Sara, take the care somewhere safe and hit the first speed dial on that cell phone. Tell the woman who answers who you are and where you are, and she'll send someone out to pick you up."

"Are you sure?" LJ asked as he slipped the tape into his pocket. "Me and my dad and Veronica, we, uh, we trusted people who weren't worth it a few times." And Veronica was dead now.

Jane let out a soft laugh. "If the woman on the other end of that phone is not trustworthy, then we've already lost whether you call her or not," she said. The SUV pulled to a momentary halt, and Jane snugged her jacket about herself to conceal the gun once more as she raised her eyebrows at Sara. "Are you ready?"

"Yes." The trembling that had been with her when she had got back into the vehicle was gone. Sara stepped out of the SUV and watched as it pulled away from the curb. "What do you want to do?"

"Now you want to follow my lead," Jane said without anger. The two of them began to climb the steps together. Sara felt strange with so many eyes around her and only fought down the urge to fidget as she realized that this would draw more attention.

"I've never robbed a bank before. Give me some credit for still being on the learning curve."

"Just do what I tell you." While Jane was being careful to keep the front of her jacket closed so that her gun would remain hidden, Sara noticed that she did not button it up. It wouldn't do if she could not reach the weapon quickly when the need arose.

"Don't shoot anyone and we have a deal," Sara said.

"Unlikely. If Kellerman lives, he won't be up and about for some time. He would have raised the alarm otherwise." Jane's glance waited for Sara's reaction.

"He needed to be taken down." She believed it.

They entered the bank side by side, Jane wearing her sleek business suit while Sara was still dressed in jeans and the navy top that she had worn for the past three days, minus a brief interlude back at the safe house when they had been in the washer. Sara tried to match her demeanor to Jane's in spite of their disparate appearances, tried to be so chill and indifferent that no one would even dare to ask her if she belonged there, and found that it was easier than she had supposed. As inapproachable as they both ought to have appeared, naturally a bank manager came towards them immediately anyway.

"Can I help you ladies?" he asked. Jane's hand twitched, and Sara gave her a hard look until she realized that Jane had not been reaching for her weapon at all. Jane's only response was a slight smile.

"My father. Frank Tancredi," Sara said, and watched as the manager began to form his mouth into a small 'O' before he caught himself again. "He died five days ago."

"Yes, yes, I heard," the manager said, casting a look towards the nearest security camera even as he had no way to signal it from the middle of the floor. "I'm very sorry."

"Thank you." Sara tried to give a smile that seemed appropriately grateful, but she had noticed the cameras herself and now did not believe that she could stop looking at them. "He had a deposit box here. I'd like to see it. I know that a will hasn't been read yet, but I'm his only surviving relative." She pulled her ID from her purse carelessly, as if the game was already up, as if she had nothing at all to worry about when it came to being caught.

"Yes, yes. There's some paperwork that needs to be dealt with…" Sara cast a long glance towards the door as the manager spoke, tensing up her entire body like a rabbit on the verge of running. "In your circumstances, however, I'm sure that we can find a way to streamline it for you."

"I would appreciate that." The manager had to turn away and take them to his office in order to retrieve the keys. Sara followed and watched with anxious eyes, feeling rather than seeing Jane's amusement beside her. Jane's expression did not change.

Along the way, the manager paused and gave one of his clerks a significant look. The clerk followed his boss's gaze, saw both Sara and Jane, and betrayed himself with a quick jerk. His eyes went wide.

"Damn it," Sara said in a voice that was surprisingly clear and calm.

"It was inevitable," Jane said in a voice that was if anything more composed than Sara's own. On a mission and in her element, she almost seemed to glow. "Ordinarily we would have four minutes. Since they are now distracted by Kellerman, we may have as many as six, but that is no guarantee."

"Play it as if we had four," Sara agreed. They followed the manager with identical smiles on their faces as he ducked into his office and then emerged again within seconds. He was wearing the same. No one believed each other.

"Right this way," the manager said as he led them down a long hallway and towards the vaults. Scarcely had he turned his back on them or taken them to a place with few other people about to witness her than was Jane flipping her jacket open and stepping close against the manager's back. She was good at this; Sara was looking for it and still barely saw the gleam of gunmetal. Someone who did not know what they were looking for was likely to miss the way that the manager's spine went rigid.

Sara cut Jane a glare. "You said that you wouldn't shoot anyone."

Jane shook her head and did not reply. "I know that you think you need to stall us," she murmured against the manager's ear, and he flinched away from her. "Here's one very good reason why that would be a mistake."

"I can see what you mean," the manager said in a soft voice. He sounded as if he would very much like to lean over and be sick. Sara cast Jane another sour look and was just as roundly ignored again. "Right his way." He led them to the room that contained the deposit boxes, shooing a few regular customers out as he did so. The dirty looks that he received as a result was enough to make Sara quickly put her hand over her mouth to stifle a hysterical giggle.

"Here," the manager said as he found her father's box and set it down in the center of the table. "If you have your key…?"

"I don't," Sara said helpfully. Jane agreed with her by raising her gun and taking careful aim at the lock. The boom of the gun echoed and reechoed in the smaller room; Sara was not sure how much of the four minutes remained. The manager jumped hard and did not relax when Jane stepped back accordingly so that he could have a few more feet of personal space. Sara took up the box and tapped it against the metal table until it accordingly fell open. The only thing inside was a sealed envelope. Her fingers were shaking as she reached out to pick it up.

"If you were going to shoot it open, anyway…?" the manager started.

Jane's smile, at least, had a tinge of an apology about it. "We didn't know which box it was," she said. "Thank you for that."

Sara examined the envelope and then the rest of the box, not sure what she even hoped to see within it. A signed confession from President Reynolds would be nice, but she would also settle for unassailable video evidence of the body being put into the car before Lincoln ever arrived scored second on the list. An envelope with neither address nor name written on it was not what Sara had expected. No. Wait. Upon looking further, Sara found that there was also a diamond ring. The envelope went unopened into Sara's back pocket to be examined later; it was the ring that she was most interested in for the moment. She had seen it adorning her mother's finger for fifteen years before her mother had ripped it off and flung it at her father during one of their bad fights, their gin and politics fights. Her mother had stormed from the room, dragging Sara with her, and her father had claimed that the ring had been lost. It had been six months before had grudgingly bought her a new one.

"Three minutes, Sara," Jane said. When Sara did not answer her, she went on, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I don't know," Sara replied as she turned the ring to and fro in the fluorescent light, watching the diamond sparkle. As Jane's expression turned impatient, Sara took a breath and gave herself a hard mental shake before she pushed the ring into her jeans pocket. "Three minutes."

"Two and a half, now," Jane said in a sour voice. To the manager, she said, "If I tell you not to sound the alarm until after we leave, it's not going to mean a thing, is it?"

"Probably…probably not." The manager winced as soon as he said it.

He need not have. Sara could have told him that Jane was a woman who appreciated honesty. "Okay." Jane ticked her head towards Sara to indicate that she should follow.

With the weight of the ring in her pocket, Sara was not sure that she could do anything else other than follow until she pulled her head back together again. Still, she whirled towards the manager, who had not moved, on her way to the door and said, "Sorry for the, uh, hostage thing. At least we kept it short."

Jane said sharply from the doorway, "Sara!" and Sara realized that she could now hear the wail of sirens. By some mutual agreement, she and Jane sped towards a run without every quite crossing that line. Somehow, they could not seem to stop themselves from the desire not to attract too much attention at the same time that they had less than a minute before it was not going to matter.

The sirens were very loud. Sara broke and sprinted across the final yards to the door, hearing Jane do the same behind her. There were red and blue lights coming down one side of the street. Luckily, they had LJ coming down the other.

"Go, go, go!" Jane yelled at LJ as she scrambled into the vehicle, almost before LJ had time to bring it to a complete stop. Sara leapt into the back while LJ put all of his weight down on the gas pedal. She was thrilled, genuinely ecstatic, to learn that LJ's crazed teenaged driving skills had not diminished any as she was hurled back against her seat with a yelp. Two cars stopped at the bank; the other two came in right on their ass and with no signs of being shaken off any time soon. Jane threw one arm over the front seat and leaned over it so that she could stare out the back window with wild eyes and bared teeth. Sara thought that Jane would have been glad to shove LJ out of the driver's seat and take over the job herself if that would not have cost them time that they did not have. She made an impatient 'hurry up' gesture with her hand instead, and LJ made the SUV's engine roar as it leapt forward even faster.

"Uh," Sara said as she threw her arm over the backseat and hunched over it in a posture very similar to Jane's. The red and blue lights were not falling back. "I think that faster would be better."

"I'm trying!" LJ swung the car in a haphazard arc around a coupe that was refusing to get out of his way, putting them briefly in the opposite lane amidst a blaring of horns before he managed to right them. Sara grabbed hard at the back of her seat so that she would not be hurled into the floor. "I can't drive any faster!"

"Then drive crazier," Jane snapped before she reached out and jerked on the wheel so hard that she nearly pulled it out of LJ's hands altogether. The SUV jumped to the left and clipped a truck hard enough to make the vehicle shudder and nearly flip; Sara had a sudden and irrational urge to clap her hands over her eyes. Because she didn't, she saw the truck spinning out in front of the police cars and slowing them. LJ took control of the wheel again and shot Jane a dirty look as he whipped the SUV into one of those sharp and physics-defying turns that he liked so much. They took several more before the sirens and the lights were behind them and Jane signaled to LJ that he could stop driving like quite so much of a madman. It was still at least a dozen minutes more before she allowed them to pull into a darkened alley and halt.

Jane hopped out of the car immediately and went around to the back. As Sara and LJ followed, she opened p the hatch and began rummaging about in a compartment that Sara had not seen before. Inside were several different license plates from a variety of states and a screwdriver with which to swap them out. Jane pursed her lips and decided that they would be from Florida for the time being before she crouched down and got to work.

Sara leaned against the vehicle as her legs proved shaky on her and stared at the broken tail light and battered quarter panel that was the result of their life-saving clip with the truck. LJ let out a shocked "Whoa" when he saw what he had done.

"Yes," Jane said as she glanced up. "We will have to be very careful as we exit the city."

Sara gripped LJ's shoulder and smiled at him when he looked at her. "You did a good job."

"Okay." Jane rose to her feet and threw the screwdriver and the old license plate into the back before she shut the hatch and held out her hand for the keys. "Let's go." Before LJ could do so, the long-silent cellular phone began to ring. All three heads snapped towards it.

End Part Sixteen


	17. Chapter 17

Part Seventeen

They reached Montana in a matter of hours. Alex had a mind that it was supposed to take longer, but if Aldo was willing to stand upon the gas pedal in order to get them there then Alex was certainly not going to complain. He ignored everything else save for the way that the scenery was whipping by outside the window, the looks that he was being given, the dark paths that his thoughts increasingly wanted to go down now that the first mission had fallen apart and a new one had been chosen in its place.

Some members of their party were easier to ignore than others. Scofield-Michael-whichever name the mess that his identity had become would turn towards for the moment. Either way, someone needed to pull him to the side and tell him that perhaps the reason that he was a loner was not his own choice nearly so much as it was that way that he had of staring at people. Michael watched because he wanted to turn desire into an algorithm that he could follow until he could find out why the numbers had suddenly twisted sideways on him. Alex did not return his gaze because he had discovered that the small taste for chaos that he had had as an adolescent had either been called up from its decades-long dormancy or had grown entirely anew. If he looked at Michael, he was sure that this surging thirst for revenge within him would be written for all to see.

Aldo parked them a good mile away from President Reynolds's mysterious estate and cut the lights without comment. Alex approved, and thought that he might have brought them to a halt even further out if he had been the one in charge. Without knowing what kind of security system was out there, they were effectively walking in as blind as the moonless sky that stretched above their heads, and Alex could not stop himself from being possessed by a nerveless sense of foreboding. He knew this enemy, perhaps as well or better than did Aldo himself. The chances that they did not have someone stationed to report suspiciously parked cars were slim unless there was something even more confidence-raising in the house itself.

A glance at Aldo's face destroyed any need for Alex to voice those thought aloud, for it said that on this matter at least they were in perfect agreement. Something was happening here that would not be advantageous to their group or their mission in the slightest, just as surely as they could not turn back because of it. Aldo ordered them out of the car with a gesture and instead into a thick stand of trees that seemed to reached for them like something out of a fairy tale. Alex could remember being a soldier still and glided forward easily, but he could not help looking at Michael's face as he did so. A smile touched at Alex's lips and was gone again before a witness would have a chance to believe that it was real. Michael was a man who would have been pleased if he could have carried out this entire battle in a jungle constructed entirely of asphalt and Bluetooth.

The only sound beneath their feet was that of the summer growth rustling, and yet Alex's nerves were still so ragged that by the time that the stately house was in view he was on the verge of drawing his gun and firing into shadows. They were not noticed, they were not detained. Alex could not even see any guards who could have done the detaining. This utter lack of security for the man that the Company was willing to kill unquestioningly for? It did not compute, it did not make sense, and the things that could not be made to make sense were-a glance towards Michael-deeply dangerous.

"This is wrong, man," Burrows said. His voice was a rumble in the dark. "It shouldn't be this easy."

"Nothing is ever easy," Michael replied, and effectively put an end to all discussion on the matter.

There was a security light above the front door, a laughable little thing like one expect above a doorstep in suburbia, but that circle of light was still enough to make them glide away on mutual, unspoken agreement. Aldo stopped by the fuse box on the side of the house long enough to cut several wires with an efficient jerk of his pocketknife; the lights above the doors winked out. They still crept around towards the back. Alex's sense of impending danger found a whole new plateau to climb to, a new surge of adrenaline to dump into his bloodstream. Michael would have been the first to reach the door if Alex had not grabbed for his forearm and drawn it back with a softly uttered, "Don't," at the same time that Michael said his name.

Aldo wound up doing it instead. The door swung open easily beneath his hand, and now Alex I knew /I that there was a bear trap hiding just beyond the shadows. He threw a glance at the darkness standing with solemn gaze behind them before he slid in after the previous three himself. The door began to swing closed on automatic hinges; Alex did not lunge forward to stop it until too late. It was not until he tried the door from the inside that he discovered why there was such lax security on the grounds itself.

"Motherfuck," Alex said in the suspiciously calm voice that came just before the meltdown, twisting unsuccessfully at the knob as if more effort would someone convince it. When everyone turned to look at him, Alex had the very grimmest of smiles to offer up. "I certainly hope that Terrence Steadman is here." He jerked hard on the door again. "Because we're going to have a hell of a time getting out of here as it is and I don't want to do it empty-handed."

Burrows swore an oath that put Alex's own to shame and leapt past his father and brother so that he could try the door himself. He made it rattle in its frame as he shook the knob. If a silent alarm had not been triggered when they had cut the electricity, Alex did not see how the occupants of the house could not be woken by such a sound now. He glanced towards Michael and saw that Michael's face was almost entirely eaten by the shadows of the kitchen, so that Alex was guessing at his expression far more than he was seeing it. He drew the details from memory borne of hours spent staring at the mug shot before he had ever drawn near the real thing. Michael was uninterested in Burrows or in Burrows' racket at the moment, presumably under the same line of reasoning that Alex was following. It was too neat, too clean. If there had ever been an element of surprise, then surely it was lost now. They should have known.

Alex had spent the past two days worrying, worrying, his mind spinning in endless circles while his body carried on the task of trying to dig himself out of the trap that he had made for himself. The clam was startling, cleansing. He locked eyes with Michael as they both adjusted to the darkness. Michael took another scan of the kitchen and said softly, "Lincoln. It won't work."

Burrows paused, stared at Michael as if his brother had taken his brain out and then set it down on the counter beside him. "What?" he managed. "Mike, you kidding me, we're trapped in here like Fox River-"

Yes. They were. In the deep and sudden calm, Alex found room to smile. Michael was wearing the same expression of faint amusement. When a plan came together, so beautifully and tightly that none of the seams could be seen, there was a weight to it, a _solidity_, that had to be appreciated. "This place was not designed to keep anyone from getting in," Michael said in that level way that he had and that Alex was beginning to recognize as a sign that Michael's mind was already whirring three steps ahead.

As his eyes continued to adjust to the darkness, more and more of the details of the kitchen became apparent to him. It was immaculately clean, with long, smooth countertops made of marble and an arrangement of seasonal fruit in the bowl on the island. It could have belonged to any upper class home anywhere in suburban America; Pam herself had talked about redoing their kitchen to look like it someday. The only detail that stuck out as odd was that of the blenders, plural. There were three of them, and each one was sleek and modern enough to belong in a restaurant rather than a private home. Alex tilted his head to one side and felt a line draw itself between his eyes.

The dark stone of Fox River, the home was not. Prisons were defined by much more than their building materials, however.

"He's right," Alex said. Burrows gave the door another hard yank that rattled it in its hinges and sent a spike of pain through Alex's brain. He fought back the urge to wince. There was an ache behind his eyes, growing stronger by the moment-consequence of being off of his pills for two long. He had left them behind at the safe house along with his old clothes. Withdrawal or not, he had not wanted to touch them.

"It was built to keep someone in," Alex finished. He pinched at the bridge of his nose as Burrows continued to be the living embodiment of insanity, if repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different result counted as it. "Do you have to keep doing that?" Alex's voice rose of its own accord and was difficult to bring down again. Stupid, even if they all knew that they were well and truly trapped. The outlines of said trap were still hazy; they could be holding on to any number of monsters.

Burrows' slow-burn glare told Alex that yes, actually, he _did_ have to do that, and would be more than happy to use Alex as his battering ram if Alex wanted to keep running his mouth. Alex was so glad that they were all getting along now, he really was. He would have loved to tell Burrows about how happy he was, and with his head pounding like a rotten tooth and his ability to focus growing more sulky and recalcitrant by the second, a few other things besides. Aldo muttered, "Damned Slovakia curse," and Michael rolled his eyes upwards as if he was asking who he had killed in his past life in order to deserve this, though Alex guessed that he still could have been studying the architecture. He was willing to put an equal amount of money on both of those options.

A fine group of mutineers they had turned out to be, and Alex was so frustrated by the way that they had allowed themselves to be swallowed up by the bear trap even as they had seen the teeth gleaming in the grass that he thought that they deserved to be caught. Michael's calm and even far away expression was not adding him any more than the growing withdrawal symptoms were, and Alex could not stop himself from asking in a snotty voice that was more suited to an adolescent than a man, "Share with the rest of us?"

Michael came back down to earth long enough to show a faint and Sphinx-like smile. As much as Alex had enjoyed the feel of those lips under his own mere hours earlier, there was a part of himself that would not mind flattening it for him. "What's the best way to break a man out of prison?" he asked Alex before he answered his own question. "By starting on the inside with him."

That urge was not fading any time soon. Alex pinched at the bridge of his nose again so that he would at the very least be able to stay in control of it and would not point out that, if Michael had had enough foresight to get tattoos of this place secreted somewhere across his body, then he was more clever by far than even Alex had given him credit for. He suspected that it may have been a part of what Michael had been doing all the same, moments before when he had mentally divorced himself from all of them. There was still a part of Alex that was just interested enough in the puzzle to push all of his other instincts to the side and see how it played out.

The house was new construction, its sleek hardwood floors not nearly old enough for the seasonal expanding and contracting that would make them start giving off betraying creaks. Alex still heard the soft pad of an approaching person several seconds before the voice actually called out, and had drawn his gun before he had a chance to think. There was enough light from the rising moon coming through the windows and his eyes had adjusted enough to make picking out his target easy.

"Hello?" said a male voice that tried and failed to fully control its tremble. "Who's there?" A small and slightly doughy man appeared in the kitchen doorway, fumbled for the switch, and gasped when it did not respond. He drew in a second and much louder gasp when his eyes adjusted enough to allow him to see the figures that were assembled in his kitchen. Standing as he was by the door and with the full benefit of the moonlight coming down over his head, Alex's imagined that Burrows' profile in particular was very distinctive.

Alex hoped that Steadman's eyes were adjusting quickly, and that he could see the gun in Alex's hand very clearly. He hoped that the barrel looked as big as Steadman's head. Alex's finger tugged back against the trigger, keeping himself balanced right up against that edge, before he could pull himself back under control again. The living embodiment of the entire mess that he had found himself in, standing right there in front of him. Alex did not think that his physical reaction would have been greater if Oscar Shales himself rose from the grave and stood before him with a sick rictus grin, clots of dirt falling from his shoulders and mold spreading across his skin.

All things considered, that Alex's breath only caught in his throat and that his finger stopped before he could actually fire a shot was a sign of some considerable restraint. Burrows let out a growl that hardly sounded human and threw himself away from the door, past the arms of his father and his brother as they tried to stop him. Alex did not bother; he understood the sentiment behind the sound.

Burrows seized Steadman by the neck with a speed that made a mockery of all his bulk before Steadman had a chance to flee by more than a foot. He hurled him against the kitchen wall with a strength that made Steadman yelp in pain and caused the walls to rattle. It proved once and for all that the president had stranded her dear brother out here without the benefit of guards. If they existed and yet did not come running at that sound, then the only other explanation was that Steadman had killed them all himself.

Alex stepped to the side as Michael went after his brother, circling so that he had a clear shot of Steadman that would not involve putting bullets into Michael and Burrows as well. He noticed that Aldo was doing the same from the other side. Old soldiers, they locked eyes with one another for a moment.

Burrows shook Michael off with no more effort than if his brother was an errant puppy, while in the moonlight they could all see that Steadman was turning blue. "You son of a bitch!" Burrows roared into Steadman's face. The sound echoed and reechoed until Alex became convinced that, even if Steadman had killed his guards, that noise must surely have been enough to wake them up and make them wonder what the hell was going on.

"Linc!" Michael yelled as Burrows' hand tightened even further around Steadman's neck. If it was possible for a human hand to crush vertebrae on their strength alone, then he was surely close. "Lincoln, listen to me." Michael gave Alex a quick glance, as if asking if he was going to get in on this, as if there was a club when it came to murderous rage, that once you had entered and then backed out again you were the go-to guy when it came to talking people down from that rage forever after. It was made worse by the fact that it was probably true, but Alex was not yet at the place where he could stop seeing Pam with every careless second, and he could not make himself care. He felt his mouth twist and hook his head hard once. Michael's look was disappointed and a little disgusted as he turned back to his brother.

"Lincoln, Lincoln, listen to me," Michael said. He jerked hard against Burrows' arm again. His voice seemed to be finally sinking in; Burrows at least glanced in Michael's direction before he went back to seeing if he could make Steadman's head swell up like a stress doll's. "You broke out of Fox River because you're not a murderer."

"Don't need him alive now to prove that I didn't kill him three years ago," Burrows said in a suspiciously level voice that made the hair on the back of Alex's neck stand up. "Kill him now, it won't be counted as murder." The way that Burrows was clenching Steadman's neck within his fist was already making Steadman look as if his eyes were on the verge of popping out of his skull and dangling by their stalks, but Alex thought that his eyes went even wider then.

Steadman's mouth worked for several seconds as he tried to find the air before he was finally able to whisper, "Not true."

Burrows' eyes narrowed, and he slammed Steadman back against the wall hard enough to make it rattle again. Alex was frankly amazed that Steadman did not simply twist Steadman's head off then and there and leave it rolling around on the floor, as Alex himself would have been sorely tempted to do. "What are you talking about?" he growled.

"You have to let him breathe," Michael said, though he did not sound as if it was any kind of human compassion that was moving his tongue. The stare that he was directing Steadman's way as Steadman wiggled and squirmed at the end of Burrows' arm was many times over more riddled with disgust than any of the worst that he had directed Alex's way.

If the glare that Burrows was pinning Steadman to the wall with was anything to go by, then Steadman's inability to spontaneously develop telepathy was a moral flaw against him. He gave Steadman one more squeeze and a slam against the wall as a nonverbal reminder that misbehavior would not be wise before he released his grip on Steadman's throat and stepped back. Alex was amazed that Steadman had not yet left a dent in the wall as a result of Burrows' tender ministrations.

Steadman slumped and would have fallen if he had not grabbed for a rack of decorative plates in order to steady himself. Several of them fell down to the floor and shattered; no one paid any attention. "Won't work," Steadman repeated. Even in the shadows, they could see the marks left by Burrows' fingers against Steadman's neck. They would transform into bruises dark as pitch within the hour, and Steadman was barely managing to speak legibly now. "There were surgeries, there were steps."

"They pulled your teeth," Alex said flatly, thinking of an item that he had seen on the news less than two weeks before the Fox River escape had taken place. The blenders made much more sense now. Michael looked both shocked and disgusted, but he ought not have. He would do the same if Burrow required it; so would Alex if that was what it took to save Cameron. The entire room was a crosshatch of insane sacrifice and familial devotion.

"Yes," Steadman agreed in a low croak. A curious expression moved across his face as he looked towards Alex, as if he thought that he recognized him but could not quite say from where. "You can't prove that I'm the president's brother unless I agree. And I won't." Steadman straightened, using the wall as support, until he could look Burrows in the eye. "I won't turn on Caroline like that." For the first time, he twitchiness subsided from Steadman's face and looked at them with something that resembled resolve.

Alex had never seen anyone less adept at reading a room in his life.

"You want to put a bet on that?" Burrows said. He leaned forward and into Steadman's face, placing his arms out to either side of Steadman's head until he had made himself into a living barrier. He needn't have bothered, as much as Alex was enjoying the image of Steadman physically trying to melt back into the wall and disappear; Burrows' mere presence and barely-checked fury were enough to keep any sane person from fleeing too far.

"Later," Michael cut in smoothly before Burrows could turn the verbal threats into physical ones. Though he was eyeing Steadman as if he was not even sure that the man was still human, he was at least under control of himself. Burrows looked as if he might easily slip whatever internal leash he was using to check his own behavior at any moment, while Alex's gun was turning so slick in his hand that he was going to have to lower the weapon in a moment or else risk firing it without intending to. Only Aldo was wearing anything that approached Michael's mask of calm, and he looked as if he could easily use it to take Steadman apart one piece at a time at any moment.

"How do we get out of here?" Michael asked Steadman, though Alex noticed that he, too, had seen his father's predatory stance. He shifted subtly until Aldo could not make a sudden lunge towards Steadman without going through Michael first. "Are the windows bulletproof?"

Steadman let out a mirthless chuckle and, after watching Burrows for a moment to make sure that the movement was not going to get his own arm snapped off at the elbow, pointed towards the kitchen door, through which the dining room table could be seen. Alex squinted and noticed that all of the chairs were mismatched.

"I don't know," Steadman said in dull tone. "I'm not allowed a gun. For obvious reasons." Yes. He had the look of a man who at this point would not mind committing suicide by taking a few of his captors down with him. Alex knew it well; it tasted like bile. "They're chair-proof, anyway."

Alex lifted his gun and calmly fired a bullet at the windows set into the back door. There was a tremendous booming noise, but what really made everyone flinch was the way that the bullet immediately ricocheted and shattered one of Steadman's precious blenders. Shards of plastic flew everywhere and obliged the rest of them to duck and shield their eyes.

"They're bulletproof," Alex said calmly while Burrows and Aldo stared at him in frank disbelief. Only Michael did not appear to be surprised. He looked as if he was on the verge of tugging Alex to the side and asking if he was all right, and then Alex really would have to punch him in the mouth. An Michael was supposed to be the smart one.

While Alex was still stewing over this, Michael pulled himself up by several estimations as he looked at Steadman, that cool hint of a smirk playing over his face, and said, "Veronica died on the phone." Burrows twitched, and Aldo looked as if he was on the verge of putting his arm out to restrain him from rushing forward again. If that event should occur, Alex thought it more likely that Burrows would simply snap it off at the elbow before he allowed himself to be talked down.

Steadman was going to leave the impression of his shoulders in the plaster if he pushed himself against the wall any harder. "I didn't have anything to do with that," he said.

Michael's smirk deepened even further and took on a mocking edge that was matched by the way that Burrows was nearly shivering with the urge to put his fist into Steadman's face. The end to everything, standing right there in front of him. Alex wondered if he really looked any different.

"I believe that you think that," Michael said, before he punched in a series of numbers on his cellular phone and held it up to his ear. When a voice at the other end of the line answered, he said, "Yes, I would like to report an intrusion at the president's estate. Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows are threatening the life of her brother." He hung up before the person on the other end could respond and continued to give Steadman that chill smile.

Steadman looked astonished. "If you know how she died…"

"Fool me once," Michael responded calmly. He glanced once in Alex's direction, as if asking him if he was ready. Alex caught himself nodding back without conscious thought. He was ready; he had been ready for the past year. He had only gotten himself turned around and pointed in the wrong direction when it came to knowing what he was ready for.

'Fool me once, shame on me,' Alex thought darkly, thinking of Pam's body sprawled across the bed, Cameron's die eyes, Michael's mouth insistent and hungry on his. 'Fool me twice, shame on me.'

End Part Seventeen


	18. Chapter 18

Part Eighteen

Michael might not know weaponry, but he knew his brother. He knew the way that Lincoln's shoulders would tremble, as if he was trying to keep his entire body from shaking with rage and the tension had to leak out somewhere, the way that his hands would clench into fists, the way that his breathing would change. Michael had been paying to Lincoln's moods ever since they were very small, and he could do it without thinking. If they left the house before Lincoln struck Steadman at least once, then Michael would call it a job well done.

Alex was different in the way that Sara had been different and thus intoxicating. His moods were plastic and smooth, his true motives impossible to read, until he was so shaking apart with grief that he was more weapon than man. Just waiting for the trigger. It occurred to Michael that he himself might be that trigger, but it was low on his list of priorities at the moment.

He watched Alex and Lincoln both for signs of violence, and he wanted to watch Aldo as well. Michael was still unable to convince himself that his father's motives were pure after three decades of absence; he cursed the fact that he could not grow a separate set of eyes to keep track of all of the extra variables that needed his attention. Steadman did not seem like a threat at the moment, but neither had T-Bag when Michael had first met him. Manipulation from a point of supposed weakness. Michael had received quite an education since then.

He heard sirens coming towards the house, far away for now. They had a few more minutes in which to linger. Even though only two of them had actually been inside a prison, the five of them still tensed up as one.

"You sure about this?" Lincoln asked Michael in a low voice. The corner of his mouth twitched, in spite of everything, as if he was saying that he already knew that the next words out of Michael's mouth were going to be reassuring horseshit and was inviting his brother to lay it on him.

"It's the only choice that we have," Michael replied. Crude, brute force, but generally effective all the same. He would worry about finesse once his brother was safe.

"It won't work," Steadman said. He was trying to sound defiant, but with his obvious fear at how near Lincoln was, he was coming across more like a sullen teenager than eh was anything else. "They'll kill me before they let you take me out of here. _She_ will." For a second, Steadman nearly sounded hurt. It was all that Michael could do not to drop his head into his hands.

"Then you're safer with us, aren't you?" Aldo said before he offered up a glittering shark's smile that made Michael glad that he had always been told that he took after his mother. "Makes fighting us seem foolish." Steadman had gone after Aldo with a fragment of the shattered blender shortly after Michael had hung up the phone. Aldo did not have a mark on him; Steadman was nursing a swollen wrist.

Michael was all out of empathy at the moment, in particular for Steadman. He shrugged, still listening to the sirens, and glanced towards Alex. Alex was leaning against the wall on the far side of the foyer, deliberately placing himself as far from the rest of the group as he could and still be available to play his part, his body so still that if it were not for the movements of his eyes Michael would doubt that he was real. Had he been like this when he killed? This chill, this remote, this completely divorced from the humanity that Michael had refused to stop appealing to until he had finally broken through? He had not been present when Alex had done murder; he could not be sure. Michael was not even sure which version he would have preferred, that Alex still have that relaxed mouth that he had applied to Michael's own, or to believe that Alex could become this cold and still habitually. He watched Alex and the negligent way that Alex was allowing the gun to rest against his thigh instead, one more crude plan that they had had no time to replace with better.

The sirens arrived at the door. Michael had heard enough sirens over the previous few months to hear the subtle difference in these and knew that all of his companions had enough experience to hear it themselves.

Steadman, of course, knew everything that was coming their way.

Aldo grabbed Steadman by the back of his neck and bodily threw him to the side, out of the immediate path of danger, as the front door was kicked open so hard that fragments of the doorframe flew at them all like shrapnel. Michael ducked back in order to protect his face and heard Steadman yelp as he struck the wall. That put the bastard well out of the way of the guns that were being thrust through the door. Would that the rest of them could say the same.

"Freeze!" the lead man through the door boomed at Michael. He had the voice of authority down to perfection. However, Michael would have been far more impressed if even the slightest effort towards dressing the part had been made. The neat, well-tailored suit was recognizable at a glance as Company.

He put his hands into the air slowly, as the man's moral fortitude had very little to do with his ability to operate the gun that he was thrusting towards Michael's face. As accustomed as Michael was becoming to having weapons pointed at him, the barrels didn't look any smaller each time.

"You stupid idiot," the man said as he walked cautiously through the door, scanning either side of it for threats. Aldo and Alex were nowhere to be seen. They had slid backwards and into the shadows before the first pieces of shrapnel from the doorframe had fallen to the expensive tiled floor. Lincoln was there, doing his very best scowl, the one that without fail made strangers dismiss him as a brute. There was also Steadman shrinking back against the wall. If he could have made himself a physical part of the house itself, Michael thought that he would have. "You should have run while you could."

Alex was back in the shadows, but close at hand. He had melted into them as if he had been born of them. Michael did not think that Alex belonged there every bit as fiercely as Alex seemed to think that this was the only place where he belonged. Michael measured his words carefully before he said, "There are certain things that are more important than personal safety." Almost as important was making that statement out loud, even as Michael could take one look at the man's eyes and know that he might as well be speaking Chinese.

The man with the glanced at Lincoln without saying a word. He didn't need to. The man could think that Michael was insane all that he wanted. Personal safety was one thing, but family was another. It was the same question that Alex had put to him scarcely two days before. Michael was still not sure what he had arrived at a satisfactory answer. He took a breath, aware that Lincoln was watching him with the steady belief that Michael would find yet another miraculous way out of yet another prison. Meanwhile, the Company man lifted the gun higher and drew his finger back against the trigger.

Aldo and Alex slid from their hiding places without even making the scuffing sound of their shoes against the floor. Michael was in a position to see the both of them from the corners of his eyes, and what he saw were sleek machines. Alex raised his gun and took aim in one smooth movement, his face remaining the same throughout. Michael did not even register the boom of the gunshot in his ear until he saw a red rose blooming across the lead man's chest and saw him begin to fall. The second boom was not heard at all. Michael felt suddenly as if his right bicep had taken a hard blow with a baseball bat, a shockwave that ran all the way up from his wrist and into his shoulder. It came close to knocking all of the air from his lungs and dropping him to the floor. Not until a full second later was he able to detect the individual point of impact, a tiny blip of time that still felt like an eternity as Michael was experiencing it, and then his arm felt as if it had been dipped in gasoline and lit on fire. He ground his teeth against one another until he tasted enamel, ignored the way that Lincoln yelled his name, and ducked back against the wall to put himself out of the way of the firefight that was looking for a way to get off of the ground.

Steadman broke and tried to bolt deeper into the house. Lincoln grabbed him by the shoulder and hurled him back against the wall without even taking the time to look around at the man. Steadman bounced, hard, and finally fulfilled his goal of making a dent into the matter of the house itself. He did not look as if he was inclined to run off into the unknown again.

A second man tried to leap over the corpse of the first, and Aldo plugged him in the throat and then the chest without changing expression. The tile entryway was now slick with blood. Michael was beginning to think that he could even smell it. He was not sure if the scent originated from the wound in his arm or from the dead men. Michael was carrying no weapon and, while Lincoln had one, he had yet to fire a shot.

Two bodies were enough to convince whoever else might be out in the yard that the bottleneck was not working in their favor, and that it would be wiser to wait until the tables had turned when the people in the house tried to come out themselves. No further bullets came whistling in through the doorway, even though no one was willing to go close enough to tempt fate and invite them. Michael leaned his hip against an end table and ground his teeth against one another as he clutched at his bloodied arm, trying to clear the buzzing from his head so that he could think.

"I'm fine, Linc," he said in an exhausted voice as his brother called his name again.

"Yeah, the bullet in his arm is making you dance a jig," Lincoln said brusquely. He tried to pull Michael's hand away from the wound and growled when Michael would not let it be easily moved. Over his brother's shoulder he could see Alex, staring out the empty and open door at the yard and looking more like a predator than ever. He blinked and seemed to come back to himself a few seconds later, before he noticed that Michael's fingers and the sleeve of his shirt were stained with blood.

"What happened?" he demanded as he strode over. Aldo was the only one remaining to watch the door, though there were worry lines around his eyes and mouth when he glanced Michael's way. Michael did not believe that he would ever be able to wrap his mind around the idea that his man who had done murder on such a large scale really could care about his sons at the same time.

Had Michael not been in such pain, he might have smiled as he realized his own hypocrisy by the time that Alex reached him. He resisted Alex's hand for a moment as Alex tried to pull his fingers away from the wound. There was already so much blood running down his arm and into the crook of his elbow that Michael could not imagine how much more would flood out once he removed the pressure.

"Let me see, Michael," Alex ordered him in a low and gentle voice, but did not pull at Michael's fingers any further. He waited until Michael peeled his hand away of his own volition before he moved the sleeve aside so that he could see the wound. Michael had witnessed two of his own toes being cut off less than three days after he had entered Fox River. He guessed that he could cope with the bloody and blackened hole that had been opened up in his own bicep, but it still made him queasy. He heard Lincoln's sharp inhalation from a few feet away.

"You still feel like runnin'?" Lincoln growled over at the president's brother.

"More than a little," Steadman confessed. He was looking at the small sea of blood spreading out from underneath the dead men as if he would not mind being sick over it.

Lincoln growled and was silenced when Michael said in an exhausted voice, "Linc. It's fine." The pain and the blood running down his arm were making him nauseous, but he was of little mind to start feeling any camaraderie with Terrence Steadman over it. And there were still the final shreds of the plan to think of.

It was much easier to keep the plan in mind when his arm was not giving him such pain. Probably easier when Alex was not touching him, too.

Alex turned Michael's arm over, gently and with no visible knowledge of the effect that he was having, so that could push the sleeve up and feel of Michael's tricep. There were calluses on the tips of his fingers that made Michael's breath catch. It was most likely that Alex attributed that small sound to pain, for his touch if anything grew lighter. That made it worse.

"There's no exit wound," Alex said at long last. It was such an easy conclusion to come to that Michael could not help but wonder if Alex had not been lingering simply so that he could continue to touch Michael. "The bullet will have to be removed."

"Fun for everyone involved," Michael said, and tried to offer up a tight smile. He was certain that it looked more akin to a grimace than it did anything else. Alex's hand around his arm tightened, only for a second, and released before it could cause any pain. They had all lost enough people.

"Later," Aldo said. He had shifted and was covering the doorway before anyone realized that he had even moved. His inability to stop watching Michael, assuring himself that Michael really was still on his feet, was troubling as ever. "Our opportunity is closing."

Aldo led them all outside cautiously, sweeping his gun in wide circles so that he could cover all of the shadows at once. Alex followed a step behind with his own gun drawn, while Michael followed him and Lincoln dragged Steadman along in the rear. Lincoln kept Steadman under control with a heavy hand on the back of his neck, the way that one would dangle a recalcitrant kitten, though Steadman was not at the moment presenting any kind of resistance. Michael did not like him, and for reasons which numbered far beyond the obvious. There was a low cunning to Steadman's face that reminded Michael of T-Bag, and said that Steadman was well-accustomed from manipulating and slinking along on his belly for so long that he no longer even wanted to stand.

There was a single car parked in front of the house, headlights still on; the two dead men had clearly not anticipated that their mission would take that long. Michael was almost insulted. Alex ducked past him long enough to retrieve the keys from one of the corpses and flashed an unpleasant smile at Steadman.

"Coming to the end of the road for you," Alex said.

Steadman replied with a small spasm of his lips. It was not a smile. It reminded Michael most of the kind of gesture that might be made by a panicky fish. "For you as well," he answered Alex.

"Already there." Alex strode over to the car without waiting for Aldo to cover him. He ducked inside, started it up, and emerged with a speculative expression that did not clear until, far away and coming closer. "They respect you at least a little," he said to Michael.

"There's that," Michael said. The urge to clutch at his arm, even knowing that it would only make the pain worse, was tremendous.

"It'll be tight, but everyone will fit," Alex went on, gesturing towards the car. "We'll make it."

"Can't leave the other one," Aldo said. He jerked his head back towards the woods. "It's too big of a risk if the VIN is traced." Before Michael could protest, Aldo pulled a cellular phone from his pocket and tossed it to him. "This phone is untraceable. The three of you get to where you think that you're safe, then hit the first speed dial."

"Yes," Michael said after examining the phone for a moment, and, "Thank you." He nodded towards Lincoln to follow him into the car with the prize that Michael could barely bring himself to look at, and grinned. "End of the road." It had a different connotation when he said it than when Alex had moments before.

Lincoln nodded back without smiling. He shoved Steadman towards Michael, hard. Steadman stumbled and, with Michael's bad arm unable to catch him, nearly ate the fender before he regained his footing. The look that he threw Lincoln over his shoulder was more like T-Bag's than any other that Michael had seen yet, pathetic and hostile at the same time. Michael grabbed Steadman's arm without thinking.

"You guys start running," Lincoln told Alex and Michael both. He was taking the same tack that Michael was in pretending that Steadman was not a person at all, that he was only an inconvenience and highly important parcel that they had to carry around with them for the time being. "I'll go with Dad."

Michael tightened his grip on Steadman's arm without thinking, hard enough to make Steadman gasp. It was only a small comfort to realize that his father was wearing an expression very similar to Michael's own. "What?" he asked.

"Linc the Sink," Lincoln replied without a trace of a smile. "He could use the muscle, maybe." It must have been showing in Michael's face that he wanted to argue, for Lincoln glanced up as the approaching sirens let out a particularly sharp wail and said sharply, "Don't forget why we came here, Michael."

'We came here to save your life.' Everything else had been secondary. It was the same challenge that Alex had thrown at him when Michael had been coaxing him over; Alex knew it, and now Lincoln knew it, too. Michael kicked hard at one of the car's tires before he shoved Steadman towards the door. "Get in." Aldo and Lincoln did not say anything else before they were disappearing into the trees as if they were already ghosts. Michael waited for gunshots and, when they did not come, spun urgently back towards Alex and said, "Drive hard."

Alex nodded without speaking. Michael was glad of it, for he did not know if he could handle the words that would inevitably go together with the bleak and barely held-together mood that had been following Alex over the past day. He did not know if he could cope with the same sacrifice that Alex had already made in order to bring this to a close.

The interior of the doors in the backseat had no locks, and would not open from the inside when Michael tugged at them. He was not shocked. Michael shoved Steadman in ahead of him and then hunched up against the driver's seat in his usual fashion. He continued to stare at Steadman, who seemed happiest when he was as far away from Michael as possible now that Lincoln was gone. Alex pressed on the gas pedal hard enough to send the car screaming away from the house and thrown Michael against the seat. They could not afford to go any slower. Meanwhile, even as the car jounced hard on the ill-kept road, Steadman never lost his eye contact with Michael.

"How do you do it?" Michael asked him. He had no illusions about getting an honest answer, was not even sure that the motive mattered to him in the end. What he wanted was to knock that smug certainty out of Steadman's face, even if it would only be a few seconds before he was able to replace it. "How do you throw so many lives away to save your own skin?" Alex's reaction was nothing more than a slight shifting of his weight. Had Michael not been pressed so tightly against the driver's seat, he doubted that he would have noticed.

Something flickered across Steadman's face. It was possible, Michael told himself, that he only had something in his eye. "What would you do for your brother?" he asked.

Michael glanced down at his arm, where blood was still running in a sluggish stream and fro which sick waves of pain rolled out every time that Alex hit a bump in the road too hard. The bullet was nothing, the mutilated foot was nothing, the destruction of his entire previous life was nothing. He would do all of it again, that and ten times more, if it meant that at the end of it Lincoln would be safe.

But that did not mean that there were not lines.

"I would not murder," Michael gritted. From the corner of his eye he could see Alex's hands tightening around the steering wheel. Steadman scoffed, but Michael already knew that his own expression had not changed. "I wouldn't." Universal versus particular. The majority versus the precious minority. Everything that he had thrown into Alex's face and that Alex had thrown right back at him, here, a concrete reality rather than an abstract, and it was making Michael sick to his stomach.

He looked out the front windshield rather than at Steadman again and his smug, self-satisfied face, just as the road ahead of them was lit up with headlights and the familiar flashing red and blue of police vehicles. Legitimate, not Company. Weren't they going to get a surprise when they reached the house.

"Hang on," Alex said curtly before he turned off his headlights and stood on the gas. The engine screamed as it was forced to an even higher speed. Michael bit at his lower lip until he tasted blood every time that he was hurled back against the seat; the car was bouncing too hard for him to keep his balance and avoid it. They could now only see the road dimly, in what little light came from the swiftly approaching headlights of the opposite cars. In rural areas like this, without streetlights, the darkness was total. The car bounced wildly from one side of the road to the other as Alex nearly ran them all into the ditch again and again.

Michael leaned forward and gripped at the seat ahead of him. He was only a moment or two away from grabbing at Alex's shoulder. "Alex," he said as the headlights loomed huge ahead of them. Another few seconds and the cars would be meeting each other hard enough to guarantee that no one was going to be walking away.

"I have it under control," Alex replied in a tight voice which said that it would be in Michael's best interests to shut up and let him concentrate. The car roared even louder, moving so swiftly that it was nearly airborne. From the other side of the car, Steadman yelped and ducked his head behind the passenger seat as the headlights became the biggest thing in the entire world. Michael watched Steadman for a second before glancing up and through the windshield again, at the exact moment when the police _had_ to see them, even without the headlights, as it did not seem that the point of impact could be avoided any longer and as Alex finally hit the brakes and made the entire vehicle scream. The police cars split ahead of them like the Red Sea before Moses, amidst a blaring of horns and, Michael was sure, a flurry of cursing. Several of the vehicles ended up with their tail lights standing higher than a man's head as they wound up in the ditch and with their wheels spinning fruitlessly.

The sudden rush of relief was heady and sweet. Michael collapsed forward against Alex's seat, his face against the headrest, and reached for Alex's shoulder without thinking. Alex put his hand over Michael's for a moment before he pulled it away.

Michael lifted his head at long last and examined the empty road behind them, the equally empty road ahead. Alex had turned the headlights back on, but they were still alone. Far too alone, when Michael considered it. Adrenaline might have wreaked havoc on his ability to keep accurate time, but he still knew that it did not take this long for two men to cover one mile of distance.

"We need to go back," Michael said abruptly.

Alex lifted his eyes to meet Michael's in the rearview mirror. He did not seem surprised. "No." Alex shook his head. "We were lucky to get through once, we won't get that lucky again."

"Lincoln is back there," Michael growled. "If he needs my help-"

"If he needs your help, then it doesn't matter," Alex said. There was a tension in his body which said that he was speaking to himself as well as to Michael, and that he was not happy to be doing it. It might be the clearest apology that he was going to get, for Michael also know that the only way that he was going to get that car turned around was if he leapt over Alex and seized the wheel himself. He dug his fingers into the seat until his knuckles popped and ached.

"He's more important," Alex continued, jerking his thumb back in the direction of Steadman. His tone was still disgusted. "He has to be."

"No, no, no." Michael knew that Alex was now asking no more of him than what he had asked of Alex and that what was right had to come ahead of what was personal, but there was still a big part of him that really did not care. He opened his mouth to argue and was only halted by a distraction to his right. Steadman, hurling his own head towards the back window as hard as he could. Michael grabbed him by the collar and threw him back against the seat as hard as he could, ignoring the pain that immediately turned his arm on fire.

"What the hell do you think that you're doing?" Michael yelled at Steadman. It didn't matter that he knew the answer less than a second after he said it. Steadman was trying to sacrifice himself for his sister. It was an impulse that Michael could understand even as it made his stomach churn to realize that he and Steadman had anything in common whatsoever. He released Steadman's collar and watched him closely to make sure that he would not do it again before he sank back into his seat. Michael felt so suddenly boneless that he did not believe that he would have been able to stand if he had wanted to.

"Keep driving," he told Alex in a listless voice. Michael barely registered Alex's nod before he pulled out the phone that Aldo had given him and flipped it open. He punched in the speed dial and raised the phone to his ear as Alex stepped down on the gas even harder.

The trees were still thick on either side of the road, so that they did not see the headlights bouncing along on the side road until the SUV exploded out onto the pavement ahead of them and nearly hit them. Alex slammed on the brakes and cursed as he struggled to bring the fishtailing vehicle back under his control. Michael whooped with joy; he did not realize that the phone at his ear had been picked up and that a woman's voice on the other end was saying Aldo's name over and over again for several seconds.

"Yes, sorry," Michael said into the phone. He grinned at Alex through the rearview mirror and was grinned back at in return. Alex was nearly as happy to see Lincoln and Aldo again as Michael himself was. Michael laughed as Alex struck the steering wheel with his hand, and then turned his attention back to the cellular phone. "This isn't Aldo Burrows. I'm his son, Michael Scofield."

The woman on the other end of the line paused before she replied, "I've heard a great deal about you, Mr. Scofield." After another pause, she went on, "What happened to Aldo?"

"He's fine," Michael assured her. He heard her sigh on the other end of the line. "We were just separated for a little while. We have Terrence Steadman in our custody."

The woman made a curious sound, as if she was trying to hold back a joyous laugh, before she said, "That's excellent. Bring him to Topeka, Kansas. We'll take it from there."

"Whom am I speaking to?" Michael asked.

"My name is Melinda Graves," the woman told him. "And I've been waiting more than ten years for the kind of victory that you've just pulled off." She made that sound of delight again, that inexpertly smothered laugh. Michael could feel a smile spreading across his own face in response.

"Miss Graves," Michael replied, "we'll see you in Topeka."

End Part Eighteen


	19. Chapter 19

Part Nineteen

It took twelve more hours of hard driving to reach Topeka. Aldo pulled over to the side of the road as soon as they were a safe distance from the president's estate so that they could all confer, but no one even considered stopping to rest while the end was so close. Steadman was not asked for his opinion on the matter. He spent the rest of the trip in close proximity to Lincoln, who made it abundantly clear that he was looking for any excuse and would not deal with any further suicide attempts as gently as Michael had.

They stopped only for gas and so that Aldo could pull the bullet from Michael's arm when Michael confessed that the pain was making it difficult for him to keep his thoughts straight. Michael made no sound while Aldo was working the bullet out, but he did turn his face to the side and grip at Alex's forearm so hard that Alex would find bruises in the skin later. He guessed that he could deal with that, he decided, especially as his hand had found its way to Michael's shoulder and was kneading at the flesh in a way that was intended to be soothing. Michael went rigid when the bloody gleam of the bullet was finally revealed. He exhaled hard when it was removed, and his entire body sagged sideways against Alex's. Alex was not sure that Michael was even aware of what he had done. The back fender of an SUV parked alongside a Nebraska cornfield made for a strange operating table, after all, and there were no precedents for the two of them.

"Sorry," Aldo said as he pulled a gauze pad from the first aid kit at his side, disinfected Michael's wound, and began to bandage it. "Most father's teach their kids to play catch instead of patching them up after gunfights."

"I was never very athletic," Michael said. "This is probably more useful." He watched as Aldo finished bandaging his arm before he added, "Thank you."

"It's fine." Aldo packed all of the supplies back into the first aid kit, leaving streaks of blood across the plastic, and stood. "I should call Jane," he said. "She'll have shot someone in the kneecaps by now." Alex suspected that Aldo was mostly using that as an excuse to give them a moment or two alone. The Jane that Alex had met in New Mexico would have had no problem shooting someone in the kneecaps regardless of whether or not Aldo called her to assure her that he was all right.

Michael sprawled back across the SUV and examined the neat white bandage that encircled his bicep. His face was still tight; had pain medication been available, Alex did not think that he would have said no to it. "Thank you," Michael said, lifting his head so that he could look Alex in the eye. "For not turning the car around. It was the right decision to make."

"I can understand the temptation towards tunnel vision," Alex said. "Believe me, better than most."

"I suppose that you can." In the shadow of the vehicle, Michael's eyes were mostly hidden, but Alex still thought that they would have been hooded. His voice was a burr; it still stroked against Alex's skin in just the right way.

Pam had always asked him what they were putting in the water whenever he had finished a big case, for he would fall on her almost before he had managed to kick the front door closed behind him. Alex took a breath. It hurt, and he knew a considerable amount of time would go by before it lessened, but already the few moments when he could lay it down where so nice. Alex extended his hand so that Michael could take it and pulled him to his feet. Michael did not let go immediately, stepped close instead.

"What are you going to do when this is over?" Michael asked.

Alex barely had to think about it before he cracked his face into a bitter grin. "I'm done at the Bureau," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if there are warrants for my arrest, either." While Pam and Cameron had always been the real threat that the Company had employed in order to keep Alex on his leash, neither had they been bluffing when they had dangled Oscar Shales over his head. And now they had John Abruzzi and David Apolskis, too. "The only way that I'm going to be able to stay with Cameron is if I run."

Michael released Alex's hand, finally. The heat remained. "Think about Panama," he said. Aldo was getting off of the phone several yards away, and Alex saw Michael glancing his way. All that Michael had to do in order to speak to Tancredi was to lift his hand to get his father's attention. He got back into the SUV instead.

They continued on.

Alex was exhausted from the drive by the time that they reached Kansas. He and Michael followed behind Aldo, who seemed to know exactly where he was going. Michael had offered to take over the driving twice as he saw how tired Alex was, only to be shut down each time as Alex pointed out that the one who drove was going to be the one who did not have any unnecessary holes in him. Michael's response was to lean back against his door and arch his eyebrow in that way that said that Alex wasn't fooling anybody. One mirror couldn't get one over on the other.

The first time that Alex had seen Michael Scofield, Michael had been scowling out at Alex from a mug shot. The second time had been while Michael was blinking down at him disbelievingly from the top of an elevator, and the third time had been when Alex had tried to kill him. Michael relaxed and pleased with himself and even, every now and again flirting, was bizarre. Alex half-expected Michael to start giggling.

Aldo led them through the downtown area and into an older industrial section full of buildings that had clearly not seen much life lately. They parked behind a structure that could have been an office building or could have been a warehouse, and in the boxy architectural style which guaranteed that the viewer could several long moments pondering the question before finally giving up. Alex could almost feel Michael's skin crawling from where he sat.

They emerged, the five of them, although Steadman did not stand so much as dangle. Lincoln was still dragging him about by the collar of his shirt like a mother cat who didn't like her kitten very much. Even with all of the loathing that he felt for the man and everything that he stood for, Alex looked and Steadman and thought that he would soon be grinning. Everything boiled down to this, and if in the end Steadman knew something that would make his sorry life worthwhile, maybe there would be a day when Alex would able to stop reeling over everything that had taken place since he had first hurled the ultimatum at Michael. He paused as he thought that he saw a shadow move in one of the upper windows of the supposedly abandoned building, but the rest of the group was already moving on.

Aldo led them to a small side door where the similarities to an aging and down on its luck office building ended, for he had to enter a code into a small keypad set beside the door before it would allow them entrance. Alex saw movement for a second time in one of the windows above their heads and would have laid down all of the money in his bank account that it was accompanied by a gun. The door made a soft whooshing sound which suggested that it was fortified before it shut automatically behind them.

'That's not at all like entering the haunted castle,' Alex thought but did not say. In the strange camaraderie that and Michael now shared, they exchanged a look.

Some effort, not entirely successfully, had been made to ensure that the warehouse was not so terribly depressing from the inside as it was from the outside, and the rest was being accomplished through sheer industry. Even though Alex's mind understood that there were only a handful of people running about the space, a dozen at the most, his eye insisted that there were many more based upon the energy with which they zipped back and forth. There were several computers, and at every one sat a man or a woman whose fingers moved as fast as Ben's had and who had a tendency to blink about themselves owlishly whenever they had to lift their eyes from the screen. As Alex had suspected from the outside, there were men with guns, though less there were less than he would have supposed given how important this place ultimately was. It was nerve center of all resistance against the Company.

And cutting through the sparse crowd, heard by the clicking of her heels across the cement long before she was seen, was a woman. She was brunette and had the curves that suggested both childbirth and the occasional full meal, though she was not fat. Alex guessed her to be somewhere in her late thirties. While her smile was warm, in particular once she saw that Aldo was there and not riddled with bullet holes, her eyes were cool and shrewd. She held out her hand for each of them to take in turn, even Steadman, though he refused. The upward tick of the woman's eyebrow said that she had expected no less.

"Hello," she said. "My name is Melinda Graves. If the network that we have set up has a leader, then I suppose that I'm it." She noticed the way they were all, save for Aldo, casting dubious looks towards her neat suit and the surrounding warehouse and added, "I assure you, the only thing that I share in common with President Reynolds is our gender."

"You'll have to forgive our suspicion," Michael told her. "The line between friend and foe had become very blurry over the past few months."

"Melinda has been leading the organization for the past three years," Aldo said. Alex made note of both Aldo's easy use of Graves' first name and the way that she did not so much as flicker an eye to hear it. For all that this Company-opposing force could move and strike with a finesse that was nearly military, the discipline was more lax than anything that would have been tolerated during his own stint in the armed forces. "She was promoted after her direct superior was assassinated."

They all had their suspicions about the neatness with which President Reynolds had taken power on the night of the Fox River escape. Seeing those doubts on their faces, Graves added quickly, "Again, our only similarity is in gender."

"She's been working to bring down the Company for the past fifteen years," Aldo said.

"Prior to that, I was an NSA analyst who heard something that she shouldn't have, compounded that mistake by saying something that she shouldn't have, and barely survived a bullet through her left lung because of it," Graves finished. She looked to Aldo so that she could, still wearing that eerie combination of comforting smile and all-seeing eyes, add, "And I know how they come after families."

Alex stiffened. Even if he and Pam had been finished, romantically, he was not certain how much longer he could take her death being pounded on like a sore tooth. "I'm sorry that they took that approach with you as well." The hell of it was that she sounded so sincere.

"Thank you," Alex said gruffly, though he was more grateful for the fact that she turning her attention onto Michael now.

"You'll need stitches in that," she said, gesturing to the place where his bandaged arm was beginning to show a red stain across the white. "We have medics who can take care of it." When Michael hesitated, she said, "I understand that you're suspicious. It's a valuable survival trait. However." The trust-me smile fell away; only the eyes remained. "If I wanted any of you dead, don't you think that I have had ample time to bring about that end my now?"

"Lady," Burrows said, "you really think that that's going to win over hearts and minds?"

Graves smiled in a way suggesting that not all of her smiles were necessarily nice before Aldo halted her in her tracks by saying, "She's screwing with you. It's one of her unfortunate habits. It's safe, Michael, really."

A day before, Michael still would have hesitated, but something seemed to have changed between Aldo and himself since then. He walked away in the company of a bouncy-haired young woman who seemed to want primarily to gawk at Burrows and himself rather than tend to his arm. Michael's expression was tolerant, even amused. He was going to have to get used to such attention if the Company's conspiracy was exposed.

"I've contacted Monica and Ben," Graves told Alex next. "They have to drive, so it'll be a few more hours before they arrive with Cameron. We have quarters where you can rest until then."

Alex was convinced that he would not be able to sleep even if he were to be given the heaviest amount of Valium that his body could stand, only in the next to realize how much of his body weight he was keeping up through force of will alone. He had not been inclined to look into mirrors over the past few days; who knew how bad he looked by now. Alex inclined his head courteously. "I appreciate that."

"And a medic, if you need one," Graves continued. It took Alex several seconds to realize what she even meant before he realized that there were still bandages from his fight against the handcuffs wound around his wrists. He shook his head. "I'm fine."

Graves gave the pregnant pause of someone who had spent a great deal of time being forced to take stubborn people at their word before she flashed Steadman her other smile, the one which made Alex aware of her many teeth. Steadman made a soft sound, though that could have been because Burrows chose that moment to squeeze at the back of his neck. "We've been interested in you and your sister for quite some time."

It was not possible for Steadman to go much paler, given that he had been one step above gibbering panic ever since he had been caught, but Alex still thought that he tried. "You can't prove anything," he said. "There were surgeries, all of the DNA samples were destroyed-" Graves' smile if anything grew even more unpleasant; she looked positively shark-like. "And I won't say anything if you torture me."

While Alex doubted that, Graves did not appear to be altogether ruffled. "Maybe that's so," she said smoothly. "Luckily for you, you weren't captured by the side with an interest in finding out. Can you change your mitochondrial DNA, however?"

Steadman started to look both uneasy and confused. "What's…" he started.

That smile again. Alex hoped that she had not been capable of it while she worked for the NSA. The nation was about to have enough problems as it was without having to take a long, hard look at its hiring practices as well. "Then you're about to get a science lesson," Graves said.

Alex could not stop his smile as he walked away to get that sleep at last; the look on Steadman's face made him think that he might even enjoy it. One of the techs detached himself from his computer long enough to show Alex to the rooms upstairs where the field agents showered and rested before they went out to tilt at windmills again. Alex only thought for a moment of how Graves must be funding this operation of hers and the chances that those methods were legal before he shut down the line of thought as fruitless. He was not an agent of the law any longer, but he _could_ be an agent of what was right. That way, at least, was clear.

Alex showered quickly, relishing the way that the hot water beat at the fatigue in his muscles, marveling at how much dust and dried blood swirled down the drain at his feet. Alex's shirt had been heavily splattered with blood when he had pulled it off, as well. A small portion of it might have belonged to the dead men, but Alex thought that most of it was Michael's. He had not noticed it while he had been driving.

"Speak of the devil," Alex said calmly as he stepped out of the shower and discovered Michael sitting in a rickety chair that looked as if it had been bought from a yard sale.

"I can only suppose that this means you were thinking of me in the shower," Michael said. One corner of his mouth jerked up. The joke had fallen flat, but neither of them was going to acknowledge it twitching there on the floor. Not the time.

"Cute." Michael did something cuter, rose from his chair in a smooth and fluid motion that belied his talk hours earlier of not being an athlete, fit his body against Alex's as if it was made to be there. Alex was wearing only a towel, and Michael's hand on his cock was not gentle. That was fine; Alex was fairly sure that it wasn't what he wanted. He was not sure which name he hissed when he came eventually under Michael's ministrations. Michael did not comment on it.

"Panama, hmm?" Alex said when he was certain that his knees would hold him again.

Michael made a soft sound from the back of his throat. "You should see it," he said. "Beautiful country."

Michael Scofield had not been out of the country-on the record-for at least four years, well before Burrows had been incarcerated. Alex shifted and stared. "And one of these days you're going to explain this whole plan of yours to me."

Michael smiled in that slow way that he had. "It's more interesting if you figure it out on your own."

Alex snorted but otherwise did not respond. For the moment, they continued to only breathe. Alex guessed that they could figure out the pieces later.

---

Sara had paid next to no attention the introductions that Jane made when they all reached the warehouse, consumed as she was by the weight of the envelope in her back pocket. She had not been able to bring herself to read it in the vehicle, with Jane and LJ there; she did not know what her reaction to its contents would be. Sara had taken out the ring a few more times in order to examine it more closely, and each time had wound up shoving it quickly back into her pocket before more than a few minutes had passed. She thought that it was nice of both Jane and LJ to pretend not to notice.

Sara barely made it to one of the quickly thrown-together rooms in the upper story, which still had plaster dust lingering in the corners and under the furniture. Her hands were trembling as she tore the envelope open and pulled out a sheet of the heavy, cream-colored paper that her father had kept in his office drawers for as long as she could remember. The shaking did not lessen as Sara's eyes roamed over the handwritten words. If the wavering handwriting was anything to go by, then her father had been having some difficulties composing himself, as well. Her father had known what was coming, and he had been sorry for it. He loved her, and he was proud of her, and he had stopped seeing only her mother in her years before. They just hadn't been able to tell each other yet.

It occurred to Sara that her father had been dead for nearly a week and she still had not cried for him, not really. She lowered her head into her hands after she had set the letter to the side, carefully so that she would not damage it, and sobbed until she felt both exhausted and cleansed.

Sara did not know how much longer it was before she felt up to seeing people again, and exited her makeshift sanctuary only to run directly into Michael. He was wearing short sleeves that exposed his tattoos from biceps to wrist. Sara could see the beginnings of a white bandage from some injury that he had received earlier. Her throat tightened for a moment.

Michael paused at the sight of her, and Sara did the same.

"Hey," Michael said. A thousand things moved across his face, but Sara was only concerned with one of them, and that was the one involving his choice. She knew that her spine was rigid as he reached out and slowly, almost as if he was expecting her to jerk away, pulled her to him.

Good, Sara decided after barely a second of contact. She had not opened that infirmary door for the sake of Michael. She had opened it for the sake of right. Everything else followed from there.

"I had a chance to talk to you earlier, and I didn't take it," Michael said into her hair. Sara shifted into a more comfortable position against his shoulder, realizing as she did so that they did not fit quite right together. There had been too much chaos earlier to get to that point. "I was still figuring things out."

Sara considered this. "Oh." She pulled back and, instead of saying any of the thousand things running through her head, kissed him, sweet and chaste. Sara could feel his heart beating beneath the splayed hand that she put against his chest. He did not open his mouth to her, nor she to him. It was not that kind of kiss.

"Be happy, Michael," Sara said as she pulled away.

"You, too, Sara," Michael said. He reached for her hand and squeezed at it before they parted from one another. Sara could still feel him lingering on her fingers long after he was gone.

Sara sighed as she turned around and surreptitiously checked her face to see if there were still tear tracks running down her cheeks. She winced when she felt the salt on her fingers.

For all that the clacking of Melinda Graves' heels had announced her arrival like a trumpet announced a queen earlier, she could move as silently as a ghost when she wanted to. Sara walked around a corner and then lurched back hard as the two of them nearly ran each other down.

"Oh!" Sara lurched backwards before she recovered herself. "Got lost, sorry."

Graves nodded and sniffed as she looked around, where the makeshift rooms resembled a honeycomb or a series of cubicles more than anything else. "It's a bit slapdash," she admitted. "That's why I prefer to use the safe houses when I can. That, and security issues." Graves cocked a sideways glance at Sara as she said it, as if she was waiting for Sara's reaction. Sara did not know what reaction, precisely, Graves was looking for and so remained silent. "You and your friends are the first civilians that I've allowed to be brought here."

"Um, thank you?" Sara asked. She started to step around Graves, certain that the conversation was over, before Graves spoke again.

"I was coming to look for you, actually," Graves said. Sara paused and felt a puzzled frown crossing her face. "Terrence Steadman is a greater blow than any that we've been able to strike against the Company before. It'll pull them out into the open for the first time."

"I'm glad," Sara said, and meant it. "There are…there are a lot of people who still haven't gotten justice."

"Yes," Graves said. Sara had the feeling that she need not have spoken at all, that Graves had only been pausing between thoughts. "However, I don't believe in fairy tale endings. It will be several more years before we can call this over and done with, at least. There will be a heavy risk of retaliation against anyone who had a hand in opposing them."

Sara thought of this, and of the way that the panic had crept up on her and had yet never crawled over the edge and beyond what she could handle back in Chicago. She said calmly, "Miss Graves, I'm not afraid of going underground."

"I hope that eventually you will call me Melinda," Graves said. While Sara was sure that her confusion must be showing on her face, Graves continued, "Jane told me how well you handled yourself in Illinois. I would like to make you an offer.

End Part Nineteen


	20. Chapter 20

Part Twenty

If ten weeks ago someone had told Michael Scofield that he would be sharing a drink in Panama with Alex Mahone, he would have laughed. And then promptly started running in the other direction.

He dug his toes into the sand instead, relishing the feeling of not need to run anywhere for now, or even to walk if he didn't want to. The Christina Rose swayed to and for at the end of the dock; Michael could see Lincoln's silhouette moving about on the deck. Lincoln had said that he was going to go fishing, see if he couldn't catch something to "settle all of that tequila". Michael suspected that Lincoln's real aim was to keep his distance so that Michael and Alex could have some privacy, and so that he could speak to Jane on the sat phone. As if either one of them would rally do anything with Cameron so close at hand.

Cameron was crouching at the edge of the shore and seemed to be playing a complicated game with himself that involved flinging handfuls of sand into the surf and hopping about excitedly when his mysterious desired result was achieved. Alex leaned back into the beach beside Michael and watched his son as if he thought that a rescue from rogue hermit crabs might soon be needed. Cameron was quieter that Alex said that he had been before. He wasn't in counseling, much as he probably should have been. There wasn't any opportunity for it while all three of them were technically still fugitives. With luck, that situation would not persist for much longer; the reports coming in from the United States were _very_ interesting. Michael thought that he saw Sara once or twice on CNN, but he couldn't be sure. He knew for a fact that he had seen Aldo and Jane before they had ducked swiftly out of the camera's range again.

"I'll give you a beer for your thoughts," Alex said as he tilted his face back to more fully catch the rays of the midday sun. It was the closest to actually relaxed that Michael had ever seen him.

Michael smiled and wiggled his feet more deeply into the sand. That way, they actually looked symmetrical. "I can get my own beer," he said. "Pick a better carrot."

"Yeah, but you would have to move." Alex flung his arm out to indicate the beer, still mostly cold and within reach of Alex's fingers alone.

"I'm good." Michael watched as Cameron found something in the sand that was worth dancing in a circle around and then holding up close to his face. He thought that it might be a small crab. He hoped that it was alive. Cameron had already shown himself prone to sneaking animals both alive and dead onto the boat when he thought that he could get away with it.

"Hmm." Alex's arm was brushing against Michael's. They were both starting to lose their freckles into tans.

From far out on the boat, there was a burst of static. Getting the news on television was always a bit of a crapshoot, this far out. Michael knew that all three of them would head back eventually and take their part in the fight. But not right now.

End


End file.
